I keep digging up stuff in DN that seems ghostlike, like image fragments that are gone before I can see them. I can note 'images' or 'thinking' but the noting seems to have very little hit on these things -

My intuition here tells me my investigation may be beyond my ability to concentrate - Is that an accurate guess or is it just that there are things in the mind that need ot be looked at a thousand times before they can be seen clearly?

one of the dark night/3rd vipassana jhana's characteristics is that you see the ending of sensations clearly, but not the beginning or the middle. this is what can make it so frustrating - you feel like you can't penetrate anything like you could in A&P cause you only see stuff as it's fading. also what can make it scary and miserable and confusing. you're doing better than i used to do in that you realize you are only seeing the ending of the images.

ahh yes I forgot about that.

I have the same thing. I get the sensation of fear hit me like a truck and I desperately try to see what caused it, to no avail. I have to sort of reason what it might be, which takes a long time and doesn't feel particularly helpful. But I haven't crossed AP, unless it happened when I was asleep...

There are vast individual differences on the whole thing, A&P as well. To some people it happens spontanously and or easly, while others have to work at it for a while.

I only crossed it on my 3rd ten day Goenka retreat, on the 5th day.
A great way of making insight progress is doing a retreat, ever considered it?

I'd say, CCC, that you have probably crossed the AP long ago just by the fact that you are so persistent in hanging out here when a lot of what people talk about, and the advice they give rubs you the wrong way. You are searching for something as the majority if not everyone here is. And that is a big sign that you probably triggered some sort of awakening within that compels you to look for answers. Am I right?

I'd say you are a dark night yogi and you just don't know it. The AP doesn't have to be some big spectacle of an experience. It could have been triggered by drugs, by some mystical experience, by some religious experience, or by even reading a book on Castaneda that made you think outside the box for a few moments.

;-)

hi bill,

you mention suspecting that the investigation may be "beyond your ability to concentrate." as a Chronic Dark Night Yogi myself (i find Daniel's term for the condition very liberating), it seems to me at this point that one of the main dynamics of the dark night is in fact that concentration no longer works for us in the way that it once did (i.e., when concentration was fun). in john of the cross's terms, the night is in general about God weaning us from our content-oriented, concentrative practices, by draining them of juice. the bad news is, no bliss. the good news is, this condition makes us so miserable that we don't hang on to much of anything and in fact are highly motivated to throw it all overboard asap. including the self that concentrates, which in the night basically amounts to concentrating misery. at some point you get so miserable that you just cut the shit, and it turns out to be pretty much all shit, and we learn to find a new, previously unrecognizable and generally unsaleable kind of fun in just cutting it.

Interesting way of seeing it - thanks.

Would you consider the word "confusion" appropriate for your state of mind or things just "don't seeems to be there"? Is it more like there is fog in front of the image or a part of the image is missing?

Seconded.

Just hang in there and relax, Bill. My guess is that in a mere 9 years or so of Dak Night Yogi-ing, you'll be offering helpful hints on this shit.

The dust is so thick in here.

shut up man, i'm trying to help this guy here, he's in deep deep dukha.

I dunno. Some of these old places seem haunted by demons  

bleepety bleeep bleep blep bleeping FORMATTING shit.


sort through the gibberish above or see

the genius of ill T of the wandering mind on just this topic at

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/20395575