1. At what age did you cross the A&P? How did it happen?

2. What's the furthest point you've reached on the path of insight?

3. What's the highest concentration jhana you've experienced?

4. Have you been anywhere else, beyond or outside the path of insight and the concentration jhanas?

5. Besides crossing the A&P, were any of your significant insight-related milestones attained in the absence of formal practice? If so, under what circumstances did they occur?

6. Did the way you attained any of your spiritual attainments feel like cheating? What were the consequences, if any?

7. How would you rate your mindfulness?

8. When you're in a store which plays music over the public address system, do you ever absently start humming an unrelated tune?

9. Do you have an aversion to eye contact? Did the way you experience eye contact change at any point along the path?

10. Do you have any clinically diagnosed mental peculiarities?

11. How would you rate your "mindlessness", your skill in concealing arbitrary elements of the perceptual field from conscious awareness? Have you trained this ability?

12. What's your MBTI type?

13. Have you interacted with mysterious entities? If so, where along the path did the interaction occur? Did you initiate it?

14. Assuming you've attained stream entry, and that you remember clearly some of your experiences of the three doors, did they take forms described in MCTB? If so, what aspects were dominant? If not, what was different?

15. Did you have any unexpected problems after attaining stream entry?

16. Assuming you're sufficiently awakened that you can quickly cycle into arbitrary stages of the path of insight, do you intentionally spend time in dark night stages outside of formal practice? If so, under what circumstances do you enter Fear, Re-observation, etc.? Why?

33. I was meditatin'.



I dunno.



I dunno. What do you mean by "jhana"?



Sure. Firenza, Rome, Toronto, Havana... Chicago is cool.



I dunno. You mean progress of insight stuff specifically? That always happened while meditating.



All I wanna do is meditate. Take steroids and meditate.



HOT.



Yes. Karn Evil 9: First Impression: PART ONE, by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. And I don't hum it, I belt that shit, yo.



I have a tendency to look through people while petting my own hair. It's unnerving, but I can't stop doing it.



Mine are mostly undiagnosed.



wut?



INRI. And I'm a 9w5 on the enneagram.



Only when I log into this forum.



Yes, no, maybe so. Do we get fed or paid for doing this?



Nope.



Nope.

Fitter...I love you.

a thousand lol's

By "looking through people", do you mean that you diverge your gaze so that the fixation point of your binocular vision is behind them? Specifically, do you do this by looking at their left eye with your right eye and vice versa?

Thanks for responding.

I think he is joking with you ;)
You may want to set your survey up with more explanation about what you're trying to accomplish if you want to get non-facetious answers.

Hi Jareth,

I think I see where you're going with this, and I feel the same way. Let me say it this way...

If you're a man, you desire women.
If you're a woman, you desire men.
If you're poor, you seek wealth.
If you're hungry you seek food.
If you're thirsty, you seek water.

Whatever you lack, you seek. The more lack, the stronger the desire.

To continue....

If you're an anxious, weird, self-centered egomaniac, you get drawn to practices which purport to reduce the ego's grip on your life.

I once attended a Buddhist temple where they were holding an open day. Holy shit, did I meet the most weird, unnattractive, self-centered, repulsive people on the planet in that one day?? The answer is YES, they were the sort of people you'd do anything to avoid. Sickly vibes. All I can say is they needed to be there. Sick people attend hospitals. Healthy people don't.

Is it bad for the sick to seek treatment ?

Okay I'll deadpan this one.



33 I think. I noted really fast until vibrations were much more noticeable and my brain felt like it was going to explode.



At least equanimity but currently I'm not sure because direct path methods are different than fading your senses with concentration up to the 8th jhana and then letting go effort.



4th.



I dabbled a little in AF with some eclectic mixing but yielded some weird results and then I returned to Shikantaza.



Noting at work and hitting equanimity for the first time. Especially noting unpleasant sensations or thoughts and not ruminating on them which brought in the relief.



No. It was always consistency.



It's more consistent than before and can continue to get more consistent with more practice.



I get ear worms but I don't hum. I'm sure the people around me would be relieved to hear it.



Nothing changed and I sometimes avoid eye contact when I'm deeply thinking during the conversation.



None.



I have not trained this ability, though what you describe just sounds like rumination which doesn't seem like an ability at all.



INFP



I think these are all mental projections so otherwise total bullshit. If anything meditation made my scary thoughts seem just like more thoughts so less scary. I don't believe in ghosts or have experienced deities. Even scary movies are more boring precisely because of the unreality of it all.



N/A



N/A



I do dark night when I get more insights as they tend to create disenchantment for the aggregates. The brain can resist for a little while until it gives in to reality at a deeper level. At that point it can feel fantastic.

Not according to me. That's why I was there after all. But I do remember thinking "I see a pattern here...these people are so wrapped up in themselves,it's inevitable they would find their way here". But hanging around other people who have this affliction isn't a good move, I don't think. Physically sick people do better when nursed in their own homes, as opposed to being around other sick people in hospitals. Most troubling was the distinct feeling of "blind leading the blind".

I'm just looking for patterns. Any pattern in the questions themselves is, if not coincidental, at least unintentional.

Okay- so why are you looking for patterns? See what I mean; clearly you have an agenda, and that is okay, but it isn't to look for patterns. it's to look for patterns *for some reason*. So what is it? Will finding these patterns help you with your practice? motivation? a paper you are writing for school?

Any background on what motivated you to write this post and what you are looking to get from it will probably help you get more and better responses. As it is-- it feels a bit opaque. In general if you shared more about yourself and your personal experience with practice, study etc. that will also help the community here get a feel for you.

Surely curiosity is a simpler motivation than the desire to achieve esoteric spiritual goals or to complete schoolwork!




My reticence stems from a scientifically-minded attempt to avoid warping the responses with my own speculative theories. I also try to avoid talking too much, and the easiest point to keep the impulse in check is before I get going. But you're right, the voice that results is unproductively opaque, and in the interest of conversation, I will answer my own questions.




At age 7, I underwent cognitive behavioral therapy for my dyslexia. The therapist's central technique was to briefly show me a word such as "should" on a flashcard, and then ask me to visualize it and spell it by reading what I visualized, or to spell it backwards, etc. In this way, supposedly, I would learn to "see" the letters instead of blindly passing my gaze over them.

My reading skills improved dramatically, but later that year I developed a non-24-hour circadian rhythm disorder and had an usually vivid dream in which a huge figure in a blue robe appeared before me, disappearing moments later. The hood of the robe had fabric over the face, with circular eye holes trimmed in gold, and there seemed to be no one inside; all that was visible through the eye holes was the back of the hood. I remember being particularly impressed with the instantaneity of the coming and going, describing it as being like a light being turned on and off by a lightswitch, one of the things dreams are known for their inability to portray.




Stream entry. See question 5.




I don't think I've experienced any. When I attempted to learn concentration meditation I was already in the dark night, had little success, and have yet to repeat the attempt.




I've had a handful of odd experiences which may have been due to unwittingly slipping into the "psychic powers". See question 13.




Yes; in fact, almost all of them.

After learning the basics of insight meditation and gradually increasing my practice time to an hour a day over a period of several months, I meditated for half a day straight, alternately sitting and walking, and again crossed the A&P, then abandoned formal practice due to a lack of motivation, only later understanding why. I was subsequently diagnosed with a treatment-resistant complex of sleep and attention disorders, for which I was put on Adderall, an amphetamine-based stimulant. Simultaneously, and for what I thought were unrelated reasons, I began experimenting with polyphasic sleep.

The drugs and sleep experiments provoked a number of additional A&P events, all of them either in dreams or fantasies, or immediately before or after, in the hypnogogic state or refractory period, respectively. Additionally, the more successful adaptation experiments involved long periods of severe sleep deprivation and resulted in spontaneous crossings from re-observation into equanimity. After a vivid dream in which my mind was on fire and I felt I was going insane, I would wake up feeling completely rested and at peace, as if I had slept soundly for eight hours. This effect was so striking that every time it happened, I assumed I had slept through the alarm, but upon checking it I would find it was still running, and that I had slept for only ten minutes.

I told my psychiatrist about the A&P events, and she said they were byproducts of the concentration-enhancing effect of Adderall; since no object is unworthy of investigation, sufficiently strong concentration can lead to insight progress regardless of the context in which one applies it. Despite this explicit theoretical understanding, it never crossed my mind when conducting my sleep experiments that the associated mental transitions were insight-related.

Later, still without formal practice and on an even higher dose of Adderall, I got stream entry. Since that time I have reduced my dosage.




None of them felt like intentionally cheating, but as I progressed, they increasingly felt wrong, as if by randomly mashing keys in a computer game I had by sheer chance wound up in a secret area that I lacked the context to understand. This is something I repeatedly dreamed about as a child.

As to the consequences, the only one I've noticed is a tiny but persistent unease.




Fair. I have a large vocabulary, an eccentric cultural literacy, and a facility with cross-domain metaphorical thinking, and so I enjoy a great deal of nuance and precision in my recognition and classification of unusual sensations. However, I'm quite poor at attending to most sensations in the first place, preferring to tune them out.




Yes. See above.




I have both an aversion to and a fascination with eye contact.

The earliest memory I have of "looking through" someone is at age 8. I don't remember whether I had an aversion to eye contact before I crossed the A&P.




Dyslexia, non-24-hour circadian rhythm disorder, sensory defensiveness, ADHD (inattentive type), and narcissistic personality disorder with schizoid tendencies, though I tend to think they got that last one the wrong way around.




Excellent when it comes to emotions, otherwise about average. I haven't trained the ability, but I find the idea interesting.




INTP, subtype TPNI ( Theorist > Architect > Editor > Actuary )




Yes, at least twice. The same entity both times, though I only later noticed this. I suspect the first was in equanimity, it took place when I was about 16, after an 11-hour walk in the dark that left me physically exhausted. The second one I'm unsure about, it happened during an episode of polyphasic sleep which occurred spontaneously a month or two after I discontinued my experiments.

Though in a sense I "initiated" the first interaction, I later realized I had been manipulated into doing so. The second time it was clearly her.




I hesitate to answer this, because my memories are not as clear as I'd like, and a couple of the experiences may have been near-misses, but in almost every case, there seemed to be an aspect present which Daniel does not describe, of a sound, a voice, a word, a thought, or something in between those things. In one case, during the approach to the three doors, it started as a low, complex, synthetic-sounding noise, gradually becoming more organic and voice-like. In other cases, it started as a female voice and became more mechanical and abstract. The two routes seem to lead to the same point. Sometimes it arises spontaneously.

I recently had a near-miss experience in which the thing seemed to be only half-formed, and was revealed to be a conceptual synthesis of three different words, two of which are, in most contexts, mutually exclusive. To the extent that they were blended together, the result was an alien concept that would otherwise have been unrecognizable. Although I have never used nitrous oxide recreationally, I understand that doing so can provoke a similar fusion of opposing concepts. This certainly fits with the feeling that accompanies this aspect, which is one of absurdity.




Yes, two: it seems to have strengthened my intuition in a way that still has me slightly off-balance, and reality's membrane seems slightly thinner, though people have long said simply knowing me makes them feel that way, so perhaps this is a consequence of better knowing myself.

Well, thank you very much for that! I found a lot of what you said very interesting, much of which I can relate to, much of which I would love to ask more questions about. I'm super sleepy right now So I'll reflect and respond later. Thanks again for sharing!

I was about a minute away from creating this thread when I saw this one. So, I'll bite. I also encourage anyone reading this to reply (especially INTPs ).

1. 18. Still 18.

2. Not certain, but my working hypothesis is EQ Mini-DN.

3. First, to the best of my knowledge

4. Possibly. I posted a thread, "Strange childhood feeling" that elaborates. Whether it can be considered a state is dubious.

5. No

6. For me, marijuana intensifies feeling of vibrations. Investigating these vibrations probably made good practice for breaking into A&P. I arguably cheated, but I don't feel that it matters or that it has had consequences.

7. When I'm trying I probably miss 20-30% of sensations. Eh.

8. Not that I recall. Although, tunes and jingles incessantly arise while I meditate. A recent example comes to mind: while being particularly diligent in my noting I heard the jingle "Just keep noting" with the voice and rhythm of Dory's "Just keep swimming" from Finding Nemo. A useful distraction I'd say.

9. Yes, although it's not too difficult to ignore. And, not that I've noticed.

10. Depression. Also, for you scientists, I have Rs6265 (A;A) http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs6265 Might be worth noting (hehe)

11. If I'm understanding correctly, poor. In fact, I'd appreciate advice about how to practice "mindlessness"

12. INTP. Tentative Enneagram: 5w4

13. I hope to

14. N/A
15. N/A
16. N/A

Also, I was going to include a few questions along the lines of "What were your roadblocks?", "What got you your breakthroughs?" and "What technique(s) worked for you, and at what stage of insight?" in my thread. I'm curious to see if there's a correlation between the answers to these three questions and MBTI type. I believe that tailoring practice to personality is the ultimate pragmatic approach. Not to mention, the Visuddhimagga advises exactly this approach with the temperaments. Although MBTI is far from rigorous, I consider it a modern refinement of the notion of temperament, and hence it has at least as much value for advising practice. If you added the next three to the list I'd appreciate it.

17. What were your roadblocks?
It's definitely too early for me to say, but my intuition informs me that metta is a weak point of mine. It fits with MBTI; my inferior function is Extraverted Feeling. Speaking of intuition, I find it hard to dissociate from random intuitions I have while meditating. In other words, to continue the MBTI perspective, my auxiliary function of Extraverted Intuition is overactive and I believe that I habitually identify with my intuitions.

These are the roadblocks I currently perceive.

18. What got you your breakthroughs?
Noting and almost stubborn persistence, so far. Although, it should be added, doing just the first exercise from Lovingkindness by Salzberg got me some sort of breakthrough. http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4977083

19. What technique(s) worked for you, and at what stage of insight?
Noting has worked for me up until EQ. So far, noting has seemed less effective for the more subtle sensations I'm trying to penetrate within EQ

1. At what age did you cross the A&P? How did it happen?

Age 6-7, first grade of school. I was playing mind games at night because I was expected to sleep but wasn't sleepy. I was visualizing short written words and decomposing them into individual letters, and trying to "hear" how they would sound.

2. What's the furthest point you've reached on the path of insight?

The sense of self lost its specialness, and the intellect/emotions barrier broke down. Hard to map 1:1 onto the MCTB maps. I like the "Simple Model", though, because it's so open-ended.

3. What's the highest concentration jhana you've experienced?

Depends on how you count them. In a sense, there are only 4, and the rest all happen in the fourth, so I'll go with that number.

4. Have you been anywhere else, beyond or outside the path of insight and the concentration jhanas?

Everyday life is where the rubber meets the road, and the acid test for any insight and concentration. Like it says in MCTB: "The first and last training".

5. Besides crossing the A&P, were any of your significant insight-related milestones attained in the absence of formal practice? If so, under what circumstances did they occur?

If you mean, did any peak experiences occur off-cushion, then yes, intellect/emotion-barrier break-down did not coincide with a period of intense formal practice. I was meditating a lot when the sense of self lost its mystique, but the peak moment when it clicked was off-cushion as well.

6. Did the way you attained any of your spiritual attainments feel like cheating? What were the consequences, if any?

More like not having to cheat any more, and hence, only the consequences of prior cheating to deal with, which is quite a task in its own right.

7. How would you rate your mindfulness?

On a scale of 1 to 10: all of them, depending on current conditions.

8. When you're in a store which plays music over the public address system, do you ever absently start humming an unrelated tune?

Interesting, will have to pay attention to that. Can't say for sure, but would tend to say, "no".

9. Do you have an aversion to eye contact? Did the way you experience eye contact change at any point along the path?

No, and no.

10. Do you have any clinically diagnosed mental peculiarities?

No.

11. How would you rate your "mindlessness", your skill in concealing arbitrary elements of the perceptual field from conscious awareness? Have you trained this ability?

Pretty high, that's what concentration is all about, isn't it?

12. What's your MBTI type?

Each time I use one of the online tools, I get a different one; I remember INTP some time ago, and last I played with one, it was ISFP. The word "marginal" seems to pop up in the automated responses a lot.

13. Have you interacted with mysterious entities? If so, where along the path did the interaction occur? Did you initiate it?

Around the A&P usually. Yes, sometimes I wanted to call.

They lose their mystique after some time, when I get to know them better. "Mind is the forerunner" and all that about oxen tracks and wheels.

14. Assuming you've attained stream entry, and that you remember clearly some of your experiences of the three doors, did they take forms described in MCTB? If so, what aspects were dominant? If not, what was different?

Since you're asking, I'll say that fruition is not an experience. Experiencing aspects of the three doors clearly is freaky and interesting, but what counts is the insight that results from fruition, not the experiential fireworks. That said, I had the "other intelligent face" thing, the curving around backwards weird geometry thing, and the getting-my-soul-sucked-out-dying thing at various times. MCTB goes into secondary characteristics, can't say anything about that.

Don't go trying to re-live other people's experiences! You are already having your own unique experience of being alive in this awesome universe! It's right in your face! I know it's useless saying this, but I still want to say it.

15. Did you have any unexpected problems after attaining stream entry?

Yes, "I didn't see it coming, even though I knew I wouldn't".

16. Assuming you're sufficiently awakened that you can quickly cycle into arbitrary stages of the path of insight, do you intentionally spend time in dark night stages outside of formal practice? If so, under what circumstances do you enter Fear, Re-observation, etc.? Why?

Captain Insight wants me to tell this message to the world: the trick is to manipulate less, not more.

Cheers,
Florian

Let's see. 48. I was meditating several hours a day on a retreat (my first), following my breath closely as well as sounds, probably a decent amount of concentration. And thus it was that on the 3rd day, something very big happened.



MCTB 3rd path is the highest I would claim.



The one described by KF as the 3rd Pureland jhana is the highest one I would claim with certainty.



Not sure what this means. I had an out of body "imagination" one time after smoking hash oil in grad school.



I have experimented with mushrooms quite a bit, I suppose mostly at low dosages, and I would have to consider them one of my more important teachers. They showed me decisive experiences of non-duality, a liberated mind, jhanas beyond my current reach, the qualities of jhanas were highlighted, they healed me psychologically far beyond anything I would have thought possible. Anyone else's mileage may vary considerably.



See above. But another's "cheating" is simply my skillful.



I think Florian made the point that it's kind of all over the map, true enough. But in an overall sense, it is unquestionably much better and more consistent than before.



I doubt it.



Well, I'm not as self-conscious which could enter into that.



No. Although it is worth mentioning that I suffered many years from mild depression and anxiety and insomnia. The depression and anxiety are gone, I feel relatively bulletproof against those. The insomnia has decreased, but for me meditation does mess with sleep a bit.



I'm going to relate this to jhana practice. I have a slight increase in ability to drop everything else other than the concentration object.



INTJ



Nope. I recall I believe it was Matsuoka always saying to his students, "dreaming, dreaming, dreaming."



At fruition I can't say I really notice the doors. Everything just lets go. From time to time I have had real clear experiences of a couple of those doors more as concepts. Who knows, maybe it was power of suggestion, but they seemed pretty spot on.



It was a bit more of a roller coaster than I was expecting, all the cycles, the ups and downs, and just the sheer amount of change, particularly for me during 2nd path when I was constantly getting new jhanas.

And there is the question of whether movies were better before, when I would become absorbed/embedded/lost into the characters and scenes, or now, when I am very aware I am sitting in a movie theater watching images on a screen.



I wouldn't assume I am sufficiently awakened
I tend to meditate more when I am going thru those stages. Seems to speed things up, maybe.

Captain hindsight agrees!