For the last month I have been able to reach "Knowledge of Equanimity" during most sits. I'm doing one 80 min sit a day, and it takes me 30-60 min to get to EQ. Nothing will probably happen in months or years (stream entry). I'm bored and having thoughts like "is stream entry really worth the work?", "can I really do it?", etc. In my everyday life I feel tranquil and contented. I can't go on retreat right now, so how likely is stream entry off retreat anyway, at my current level of insight? How do I keep up my motivation?

Link to practice log

Here's something that will motivate you: if you slack off your practice, you'll slide back into Reobservation. Been there, done that. Not fun! Being tranquil and contented in daily life is a pretty good deal. When I hit equanimity most recently, I thought, if life were always like this, I'd never consider practicing at all.

Don't write off your chances of getting SE without a retreat. Your practice schedule sounds rigorous to me, and while it's taking you time to climb up to your edge, as the days pass you'll be getting there sooner and sooner, until after awhile you'll be spending lots of time there. Then you'll notice the vibrations intensifying, and there'll be a couple of times when you'll wonder if it's building up to something, and there'll be a near miss. And then, one day, . . .

There are many people who have gotten very far with no retreats whatsoever. I somehow managed to get 3rd path with no retreats at all.

Just don't lose your momentum and keep sitting. This will set up the environment for things to pop. Note everything including the doubt, lack of motivation, boredom, contentment etc. Letting go is the only way. You cannot make it happen, you cannot know when it will happen, so why fuss about it?

Hi Jane. Would you mind describing your experience of "vibrations intensifying"? Sounds like Morgan is heading in that direction and I am currently right in it (once more). Would be good to hear your account..

thanks,

Howdy Morgan,
On the doctrinal level, I think about the Buddha's statement that with Stream Entry one has at the most seven more incarnations as a human being and that the doors hell realms are closed for him / her. Having come so far in THIS rare human lifetime, it would be a shame and a tragic waste to not use every opportunity to reach this valuable milestone. The idea of hell motivates me.

On the practical existential level I think that re-ob is not fun and can be damaging to personal relationships so moving beyond it is simply a much more comfortable choice.

There are some stars who contribute to this forum who have blazed past SE without a minute of retreat time. Additionally, boredom is not a constant companion and the highlights in some sits blow away the standard worldly alternatives IMHO.

Bon chance!

What he said.

I second what Russell says.

You have to make this practice something that is useful in daily life and yields actual results with people and responsibilities. Remember that thinking about yourself or your practice is just thoughts. It's not a thinker. Ruminating about practice or anything just goes back to the Decartes "I think therefore I am" trap. Ruminating is just ruminating. It's like a hamster on a wheel. It also isn't a self because it's activity is known to consciousness. Your brain knows it is thinking. All this stuff can be noted and should include attachment to jhanas/paying attention/volition/expectations/choices/etc. All this is happening to a consciousness so none of it is a self. First note and then let go of clinging (obssessive thoughts) to those notions or activities right back to your natural senses. If you can get to that point in daily life then investigating consciousness is the next step. I also like Shinzen Young's method of moving between a "do nothing" practice when agitated or tired, where noting stops but paying attention is still there, and a consistent noting when there's too much laziness. When I got to equanimity the "do nothing" practice helped me enjoy the equanimity more effortlessly and I could start seeing how this could infuse daily life by letting go anytime clinging would appear. I can't stop thoughts from happening but I can stop clinging to them. I don't have to sit on a cushion or be in a special environment to let go. I was blocking thoughts too much with noting and creating a sense of self that is noting another self. When you let thoughts in and let them pass away on their own the relief is better than jhanas.

Keep noting consistently but try and reduce the strength and severity of the labels so subtle phenomena aren't covered up. Daniel's Vipassana Hierarchy has that extra subtlety that has to be noted.

For the longest time, what happens to me in Equanimity is that for every sit I get dreamy images and then suddenly the mind clears and I experience my whole body as gentle vibrations. Then it's back to dreamland, then it's more vibrations. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sooner or later I'll have sits where the vibrations become more pronounced, less gentle. The visual field is in motion. The heartbeat sounds like a jackhammer. The noise in the ears feels like crickets screaming. There's a sense of expectancy. It seems to build, get louder, more exciting, more intense. It's not kriyas; I'm not actually moving, but my whole universe is in motion.

What came next on the day I got SE is I felt as if the whole thing exploded, then began to wind down. Then there was a massive bliss wave. I wasn't even sure about it at the time; it's what happened on subsequent sits that made it clear. In the case of second path, I had a less powerful buildup, then all of a sudden everything stopped and went silent. The noise stopped, the motion stopped, then I found myself thinking, huh? And it started up again, only began to wind itself down following a bliss wave. Again, thought it was nothing until the aftereffects became clear.

Yep. Sounds very familiar. I have been here a few times now. My vibrations become finer and finer, faster and faster --and on one memorable occasion last year I experienced something very similar to your description of SE. I have concluded it was not SE, but it does bear a remarkable resemblance to your description.

Thanks Jane, much appreciated.

Thanks everyone for all the good advice and encouragement! It inspired me to a two hour sit , where I spent 1,5 hours in EQ. Interesting experience. I tried to include everything I could find and had a slighly stronger focus on the sensations making up the center/observer, which started to move, flow and flicker. I wonder if it's generally better with one really long sit a day then let say two shorter ones(?).

That was my experience. When I got SE, I was doing one, two-hour session per day.

Resolutions may help.

I've had similiar experiences on my last 4 sits (3 of which were all this evening)... although my face was actually vibrating quite rapidly. in your opinion should I be trying to bring about these 'rushes' in order to get to stream entry? which i seem to be able to do sometimes when i focus more on the vibrations on and around my nostrils. also when the rushes occur do you have any particular advice? i've just been trying to stay focused on the vibrations in my face which are the most rapid. finally how did you know youd made stream entry in the subsequent sits? my rushes winded down but I didn't feel anything like a complete cessation...

sorry for all the questions, and sorry for hijacking your thread Morgan, hope you're keeping your motivation. I've been in what i think equanimity is for just under a week and i'm finding it quite a difficult stage, i don't know whether its the confusion over what to do or the anticpation/expectation of stream entry.

Don't worry , I think your questions are important. I asked a similar question here. I also had rushes, but now it's a more constant high speed flickering, similar to the peek of a rush. I've been in EQ for about two months now.

People sometimes get stuck for awhile at this place because they start pushing. Another term for it is "striving." The real trick is to relax into it. If you try to make it happen, you're going in the wrong direction. The key is to surrender to whatever is happening. Let yourself be surprised. If it takes weeks, or months, so be it. If other people just run right up the path and get Stream Entry after a brief stint in Equanimity, that has nothing to do with you. Just sort of sit back and watch the show. Suspend your expectations. When the rush comes, just go with it. If it builds a bit and then subsides, watch that happen. If it keeps building, stay with it.

I don't recall that I focused on vibrations in any particular place. I kind of let the whole universe, with me a transparent container within it, vibrate. I sat back. When I got first path, I did not experience the cessation; in fact, I thought I'd missed, even though there was a pretty dramatic sense of climax. It wasn't until later, when I sat down to sit again and got strong energetic phenomena, that I began to suspect what had happened, and even then I went online, described it, and let other people make the call. For second path, I was taken utterly by surprise by a textbook cessation. It seemed like such a no-big-deal that I could not believe it; I thought I had weeks or months of practice ahead of me. Once again, I posted about it and then described subsequent sits, and people said, oh yes, that's path.

Here's a tidbit I'd like to offer for people who are gunning for stream entry really quickly, from a person who got it really quickly.

My verdict is still out on whether it actually is all that beneficial to land it right away. I suppose it depends upon what you're going in with. After I started meditating, hit A&P, my Dark Night was ridiculously mild, so much so that I wondered what all the hype was about. However, post stream-entry I had *a lot* of messy fall out to clean up and subsequent Dark Nights were very difficult. I really didn't get all that much time to understand how the progress of insight plays out leading up to stream entry so I think it took me longer to figure it out post. I don't know if others who got it quickly had this same experience because I never really asked, so I'm not saying this applies broadly, just relaying info mostly.

Wow, my experience as well. Never thought about it this way. Each path has gotten more difficult. Seems I didn't see enough into suffering the first few rounds.

thanks so much for the advice Jane. i'm trying to strive less its difficult tho as making more of an effort seems to be producing the rushes but maybe they're not the key...

during my sit tonight i found i could bring about the rush by softly focusing my attention on a rapid vibration somewhere in the face area, i noticed that maintaining a sense of effort or focus in the area with fast vibrations seemed to increase the rush while 'letting things happen' often led it to dying down. it became quite intense at some point with my eyes rolling around in different directions and eventually died down again... i'm wondering if i'm wandering off into concentration practice with this sense of effort and focus?

should I be focusing less on bodily sensations and trying to include more complex subtle things at the moment eg. space, consciousness etc, i just find the pull of the fast vibrations and the subsequent rush quite strong as the anctipation and excitement it brings me seem like its leading to stream entry...

Steph my dark night was also very weak and quite short so i'm definitely taking on board what you've said.

Good luck Morgan!

Scott Im enjoying reading about your progress. Keep up the good work!

Im in a similar position currently so Im glued to this thread...

FWIW my DN was an absolute horror, and still can be if I lose momentum as I did recently when I fell ill for a couple of weeks.

I don't know if you're wandering off into concentration practice, but you seem to be working at producing a particular state, rather than investigating what is arising in an impartial manner. The meaning of Equanimity is being impartial to whatever formations arise; if you're privileging one such over others (the sense of a rush vs. having it die down) then that's not being equanimous. Though there's a difference between observing what's happening, watching it grow stronger (intensity, rush) and pushing it to grow stronger. Are you allowing it to happen or trying to make it happen? That's the key.

One clue is that you say when you move your attention away things settle down. I'd experiment with letting things settle down for awhile. The fact that they're settling down doesn't mean nothing is happening, or that progress is being reversed. Try just for this one sit--or several in a row--to just let things settle if that's what they seem to be doing on their own. The practice of choiceless awareness is just that--not exercising any choice. You're probably worried about missing the boat if you're too relaxed about things. You could out of mere curiosity suspend that worry for a sit or two; it won't be the end of the world. See what happens.

thanks Jane very good advice, had abit of a weird day yesterday, woke up around 6am with my mind absolutely racing, when i sat intense vibrations were there right away before i'd even done a body scan (cycling back to A&P?), had a couple of decent sits allowing rushes to build up combined with settling down into feelings of spaciousness and no-self and then seemed to hit dark night stuff later on (cycling or just bad mood because of lack of sleep?) this morning the vibrations were almost all gone which is strange as they have been part of my sits for the past few days, seemingly had lots more dark night stuff (inability to meditate, aversion, wanting to give up meditation etc) which I think eventually settled into equanimity but with no rushes or fast vibrations. can't help but feel a little sad that theyre gone haha but I will stick with it, thanks again for your help.

Thanks Bagpuss, not so sure I'm making great progress tho, how is your practice going?

Sounds like A&P Scott. Probably not what you want to hear, but here's the good news: It seems from experience and reading many other peoples experiences here and elsewhere that for many, progress looks like 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Like you have your "base" at the A&P perhaps, but you have sporadic bursts of progress that propel you through the DN into EQ from time to time. With time and practice that base moves closer to the source.

My current base state "seems" to be low EQ, but I have discovered that where once it was very clear to me, now it can be really hard to tell teh A&P from EQ --only after the fact, or later after more sits does it become clearer. At the time it is hard to tell, and probably counter-productive to waste time trying!

I suspect you might be in a similar boat?

These are good points you make BTG. Now I look at it as more of a range that I slide around in, with the upper and lower bounds bookending a range of range of states, with any place you think you may be in the range could be followed by something a click or two in either direction.

it would seem so Bagpuss, I'm spending alot of time during my sits contemplating which state I might be in, so I'm gonna try and knock that on the head, or even better observe it. good luck with your practice!

struggling to keep up the motivation now too... becoming bored + uninterested, feelings that I find hard to locate or investigate... feeling relaxed, spacious and fine perceiving many vibrations but struggling to find the inclination to observe them, often day-dreaming... any thoughts anyone?

If you're daydreaming then you're not letting go enough. Let go and enjoy your automatic senses and pay attention to the 3 characteristics all the way through it. Be aware of body tension and facial tension and relax after letting go. Look at the sensations of your thoughts (how they feel as opposed to content). Have a ready stance before hand where you are aware of how okay you are. It's good to enjoy when you aren't affected by hindrances. Note experiences (even without labels if they are covering up experiential detail) and let go of daydreams. You should notice the mental stress when your mind is caught up and the relief when it's not. You don't stop the thoughts but have fun understanding them and letting go. Clinging to obsessive thoughts is what has to be let go of. When feeling tired and lazy it's good to make sure you're consistent in noting and leaving as few gaps as possible and when you're legitimately tired you can note without labels and just let all sensations wash over you (while still letting go when you daydream). Having a curious mindset when being aware of sensations and noting just for the sake of it (not goal driven) will get you farther. Striving for more goals as opposed to a resolution to stick with it is just more stress. Notice the feeling of separation when caught up in thoughts and notice when that sensation seems to be absent.

Only look at maps when you notice a big difference otherwise stick with the instructions. You are trying to understand the changability of now that is always there. No daydream or jhana will change that.

Most people do too little than too much but if you find you're doing too much then take a break. If you feel like sleeping it's probably because you need sleep so get some.

thanks for some great advice Richard. I've just been paying attention to the whole visual field lately and just letting things happen, I've also stopped noting and am just paying bare attention. seems to be working quite well. thoughts are still a tricky one to observe.