I have recently sort of just begun to get what you mean by this.  It feels like there is a way to unlock all of perception being pleasant, all the time.  It seems that 'pleasant,' is one of the characteristics of the way things are, without filters, in fact.

howdy fellahs,
man..you are really bending convention and language with this stuff.  great!

'dark night' (the name we give to this stressful stage of development) is a phase that our normal, "untrained" minds can't really get comfortable with because we tend to be more comfortable with clarity and full comprehension which in the DN is not available in the tightly focused worldview that we worldlings have.

@pawel - shinzen youg has his formulas for what dukkha is and is expressed something like 'resistance' X 'stress' = 'dukkha'.  so less resistance = less dukkha.  this formula doesn't mention sukkha but implies it as essentially the opposite of suffering.  so Pawel i think that you, as a very advanced practitioner have access to this view of the DN as a source of bliss and happiness which many less advanced practitioners are simply unable to comprehend yet.  i admit to being a little confused about your "here" and there" references and so would love for you to elucidate your 'tips' for panning out the sukkha gold from the DN experience. 

@noah - i think calling 'pleasant' a characteristic might be a little confusing given the typical usage of that word in this forum.  also i don't think that it is taught, in buddhism at least, that it is at all a realistic goal that things can or should be 'pleasant' all of the time.  (ref: 1st noble truth) is that what you are saying?

of course advanced practitioners can always take lemons and make lemonade from them.  I like pawel's use of the word 'tuning' because that is how i see this whole run of practice:  learning to 'tune' our focus of attention to all of the different aspects of our experience and to understand them for what they are.  the understanding allows us to break through the fixation or habitual reactive patterns and turn towards less afflicted modes of experience.

Hey Tom,

The effect I'm describing is really knew for me, but its something I've been sensing pretty much all the time, at varying levels.  It feels a bit like every object of perception is sentient, looking back at me, or something like that.  Or just alive and vibrant in its fullness.  I don't know.  With enough inner activity 'contained' I've been able to appreciate the 'wow' factor of all sensation, in general.

I like 'tuning' too.  Its important not to get too attached to a specific quality that arises.  This could be just a phase for me.  But the lesson will be in the overall unreliability of experience, the fact that it changes over time.... the three c's.  Even if there is a trend for it to get easier, at some point it will end entirely.  Pretty unreliable.  Time to let go

pawel,
that post is pure gold, thank you.  from the first sentence to the last period.

you mentioned that some experience is required...exactly. 

my analogy, again a wave anaolgy, is of a motorboat in choppy water.  at normal, or most, speeds the ride is very bumpy.  but when one tunes the speed of the boat to the right natural frequency of the waves, one skips over the wave tops with little disturbance.  until one learns how to do this though, most things one tries are uncomfortable.

the alchemy of turning the DN stages into 3rd jhana is a good one as is your description of the "here / there" mechanism.  thanks for all of this. its really valuable.

Thank you, Paweł and Tom, those last 2 posts were incredibly insightful.

I have also found this to be the case in recent years. Fear has always been appealing, but misery has taken some getting used to.

I think it is a lot like enjoying "acquired taste" foods like stinky blue cheeses or Vietnamese fish sauce. At first, the pungent smell is overwhelming: your brain tells you, "it's rotten, don't eat it!" And, to be fair, it is rotten. That gorgonzola is full of mold excrement and you are quite literally eating shit. But bite into it and you have this lovely velvety texture, with a complex, buttery flavor on the periphery, so the spicy-earthy tang of the mold is appealing and adds to the experience rather than detracting from it. It might be shit, but it's tasty shit!