So, I just finished another two day retreat at home with the intention to attain stream entry as soon as possible by means of insight meditation. Here's my report...

Before the retreat started:
A Big Issue blew up in my life, and created a lot of agitation in my mind going in - both "positive" thoughts about Big Issue (love, craving, fantasy, joy...) and "negative" thoughts (brooding, aversion, resentment, trying to figure it out...)

Most of the retreat was spent dipping in and out of thoughts and storylines about Big Issue. I read through some of MCTB where it states: "The big message here is: drop the stories, find a physical object like the breath or body or pain or pleasure or whatever, and look into the Three Characteristics precisely and consistently!" etc. etc.

I had a very difficult time seeing stories as stories, let alone being able to "drop" them. It occurred much more like the stories were reality, and the breath/body etc. were insignificant details within the stories. I noted: stories, thinking, planning, fantasizing, looping, rehearsing, content, etc.

As I practiced:
I still found the stories very sticky, and that they would drop me very much unconscious while I was in them. With this I noted: stickiness, frustration and anger at myself for going unconscious, conflict, attempts to control my mind, etc. I was unable to notice the "dragged away" moment when the stories would begin, but was able to notice more the "coming back" moments when I returned from storyland. Coming back usually looked like this: moment of present moment awareness, realization of "lost in story", some very quick sensation like a cringe (the pain of knowing that I'm not acting in line with my resolve), often some sensations of self-flogging, some moments of trying to control attention, then often a sense of feeling lost or confused. At this point, I was sometimes noting all of this with more or less precision, or I was slipping back into the story, or I was recentering on a physical object like body or breath.

I spent a lot of time (when not in stories) doing body scans (Goenka style) to stay grounded in breath. But, again, I still had the sense that the body was just a small insignificant detail in a larger much more important Story! Oh, what a mind!

I also had very very strong memories arising - more vivid and realistic than any memories I've ever had in the past. The memories usually contain bright lucid imagery, and a full body sensation of actually being there in that moment. Often there was also a sense of craving attached, like a stickiness, although I can't say that there was any real sense of wanting to go back to those places and times in my life. More of a pre-programmed craving.

For Day 1, I went easy on it, having lots of acceptance for the story trains. I didn't have any sense of where I was in insight... but I sorta went on the assumption not to underestimate the Dark Night. I spent a lot of time noting: suffering, suffering.

I also investigated into the energy of the agitation which had a sort of luminous enthusiasm to it. It was almost like an ADHD puppy dog. Like when a dog can't help but sniff at someone's butt compulsively, this was the compulsiveness of the sorta luminous awareness which compulsively wanted to engage these storylines.

On Day 2, I continued in my attempts to be simply with the sensations of each moment as they arise. And, perhaps at this point I did begin to underestimate the power of the Dark Night. By late in Day 2, I was very wound up in what seemed like very nearly a psychotic break from reality. My body was somewhat contorting and there was a very strong impossibleness of being in every moment - like impossible to be, and impossible not to be. I had some faith that this was practice-induced and that it would likely go away when I stopped practicing, but I also was concerned that there might be bleed-through into my work and life if I pushed it any further. So, on the evening of day 2, I decided to break the retreat a little early by engaging in some mindless entertainment for an hour or two. Although I didn't really find it entertaining much, I was somewhat able to relax my mind out of the psychosis-like state.

Then, I noted the entire process of the decision-making process (should I keep going or not?). I noted the commentator/narrator who was telling the story of my retreat as it was happening. I noted: excuses, judgments, conflict, suffering, pain. I noted how even when I wasn't in the stories, there was still some sort of excuse like "well, I can't meditate because of all these stories." ha! I noted a very very strong sense of self/identity wrapped up in the stories. And actually, perhaps this was the most profound discovery of the retreat was discovering this very very solid sense of self that was maintained through and by the stories. I never even knew there was a sense of self there, but Wow!

Looking now in retrospect: (and with some greater perspective)
It seems clear that there was indeed a strong identity being challenged by the attempt to come out of these story patterns which I didn't even know where there and probably wouldn't have known were there if Big Issue hadn't blown up on me. So, in some ways, it seems like it was some very important work to begin the process of identifying the sensations which make up Big Issue and all the stories about it and all the reactions to the stories about it. It felt like the few moments of real sensate awareness were very de-stabilizing to these story loops which were very strong and mostly unconscious. And, it felt like there were some pretty strong defenses against that kind of destabilization - a very strong resistance to the impermanent, out of control, unsatisfactory nature of what was really going on. The words "I hate reality" came out at least a few times.

In fact, perhaps I can attempt to describe something cool that happened. There were a few moments where my resolve kicked in on high, and my attention went straight to sensations and it was like a one of those drill bit truck tunneling machines just drilling straight into the heart of the present moment with just complete disregard for whatever the so-called "content" of that moment was. Like, if the story was a flowing, moving structure from past to future with all sorts of thoughts... this quality of attention came in and literally drilled a whole directly into the structure of it centered right on the present moment. Like this:



It also became apparent that it was because of the high degree of unconsciousness arising every time I indulged in the stories - it makes sense that I didn't even know any of this was even happening.

I was disappointed that I didn't make it into the more "frontier" territory that I had been working on in prior weeks (High Equanimity) or that I came no where near to stream entry. But, I noted: Disappointment, disappointment, pain, pain, etc.

Overall:
I think I could say that I had a very visceral experience of how much suffering is involved in living life as an imaginary story.

I also wish this had been a longer retreat as I think it could have been very interesting to see this all unfold over a couple more days. Right now, as I type, having broken the container of the retreat, I feel remarkably much more free from the story loops, and much more present to the sensations of my fingers on the keyboard, the sounds of the striking keys, the birds singing outside my window, the soft green light reflected off the leaves of the trees outside. The sight of falling leaves drifting down through the branches. My breath coming in, going out. etc. What a wild ride.

And, yet, there also seems to be some sort of denial that seems to be a lingering of the luminous enthusiastic puppy dog energy. Like, there is still a sorta pull of not wanting to look back, not wanting to examine experience, but rather wanting to indulge in the content with a sorta reckless enthusiasm and restlessness.

And, also I'm noticing how from one perspective, it kinda seems like "whoa... what a ride, that was crazy and fucked up and it sucked."... but then from another perspective it just seems like: "whatever dude... it was just a bunch of sensate experience, stop making such a big deal out of it."

Anyway, that's what happened as best I can describe it. I'm not sure how accurate my report is, but I tried to stick to the facts anyway.

Best,

Daniel

ps. If anyone's interested about the "Big Issue", it was this: my ex-girlfriend came to visit last Monday. We had a long painful break up and then haven't talked much in the last several months. Upon her visit, wouldn't you know it but we started to fall in love again. Thus, there was a mix of love, joy, fantasy, hope, and also bitterness, sadness, resentment, and blame, along with a resulting confusion.

Awesome report on an awesome amount of effort and diligence. That you were able to stick to a 2-day self-retreat in the midst of a Big Issue flare-up is a good sign of your commitment, and coupled with the insights and breakthroughs in concentration it sounds like a "successful" retreat (I use quotes because I think any serious, skillful efforts made to attain awakening is a success in some sense, but of course it's nice psychologically to feel accomplished, though that can be dicey in and of itself...but anyway...).




Sounds so familiar - I think these are great insights!




Pretty cool when this happens. I was just reflecting on how my concentration sometimes does that as well - a great relief after a struggle with unconsciousness or cloudy concentration or what have you!



Seems like the best way to deal with it, even though it sucks. When I backslid moving to Chicago I was disappointed in some ways (though really I was too heavy in Dark Night to feel disappointment -- I was overwhelmed with fear, misery, disgust, etc!). But as I've been told by Florian and many others have mentioned, it seems that the backsliding is part of the process once one initially reaches Equanimity. And sure enough, a few days after making it here I got back up to equanimity (my best guess, of course ... but definitely equanimous compared to the first few days!).



Sounds like all good stuff. Good to hear you're balancing yourself out as best as you can, something I definitely strive to do as well (and I guess everyone else on this ride).

Anyway, naturally I have no advice for you myself but I just wanted to comment for solidarity's sake.

Keep at it!

-Chris

how much walking are you doing on these retreats? walking defeats strong story-mode better than does sitting. modify your practice to allow better continuity.

Not a lot of walking. I will try more ways of modifying my practice for my state of mind. Christopher Titmuss gave me similar advice when I was on retreat with him. I have some difficulty however because I get a lot of physical pain and soreness which persists for a long time if I work my body too hard - and for whatever reason, meditative walking seems to be very hard work for my body. I don't know what my pain issues are about, but I'm sorta hoping that whatever it is will eventually pass, or I may just have a lot of pain for the rest of my life. Dunno. I wrote another post on that a couple months ago.

I mostly spend about 10 hours lying down, about 1 hour sitting, and about 1 hour walking, about 1 hour listening to a dharma talk or reading dharma book (usually sitting, but sometimes lying down) and about 1 hour doing some sort of simple work (sweeping, dishes, etc.) Add in 8 hours of sleep, a couple hours of cooking, eating, peeing, showering, etc. and that's a typical retreat day for me. I do some periods as "timed sits" so to speak, where I resolve to sit/lie/walk for 40 minutes or whatever, but mostly I just wing it as I go.

I did more sitting and walking a couple weeks back and I found it very hard to go to work the next day (where I need my physical strength for my job)

Chris - thanks for the comments.

Woah, it all sounds familiar.

In my second long retreat, one of the problems I had was drifting away from meditation into stories. Although there wasn't any specific issue that made them very compelling, they were still coming on strong.

In fact having decided to "catch" the moment when the mind drifts away was important for progress, as it was then that my practice started focusing on the middle of the head (I've wrote to you about this before!). For me, the "place" where the mind begins to drift is in right in the center of the brain --- there is a sort of shift, a sort of active manipulation of thoughts and intentions which happens there, it is as if the thought train was actively put out of phase with conscious attention. It is in this very same place that craving and aversion seem to happen for me right now, it is where the mind tries to hold onto things. And it was a release in that area which caused stream entry and now second path.

Tarin's advice makes sense for me, if at some point you can walk without all that pain then it is probably a good idea. There is something about walking back and forth, having to turn around, that brings one back to the job at hand without fuss or frustration. It was during walking meditation that I first caught the mind-drifting mechanism.

Keep going and take care!