Hi,

This post is meant to start an informal survey thread for folks who have had experience/cultivate fruitions, cessations, or path moments such as occur during stream entry.

Has anyone had such experiences that have been accompanied by normal activity (walking, talking with someone, watching TV, etc.) which continues during the experience? Or has the experience occured just during meditation when sitting quietly and performing a vipassana or shamantha practice?

Thanx.

Apologies for answering my own thread, but I have some experience to relate here.

I've had both. I had one case where a fruition/cessation like experience occured after I had filled up my car with gas at a gas station in LA. After I paid for the gas inside the gas station, I walked out to the car and had my hand on the door handle. The next thing I remember is sitting in the car looking down at the button to start. This was after attending a 10 day retreat. I also had a pretty deep and powerful cessation during a retreat with Shinzen Young 5 years ago during meditation. This was after about a year of practicing his "just note gone" practice. Shinzen himself also reported during one of the retreats I did with him having fruition type experiences driving down the freeways in LA.

As a side note, I don't practice Shinzen's technique anymore, I switched to Mahamudra a few years ago.

Thanx.

1st cessation for me - while talking to my mom!  But i was talking about meditation/spirituality, specifically about "what would it take to just allow the field to be inherently nice forever?"

Just to make sure I'm understanding the question correctly: Are you asking whether normal experience continues during fruition, or is it more a question of Fruition occurring while engaged in day-to-day activity? I suspect it's the latter, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

The first Path moment here occurred in 2009 while sitting at the computer and not while on the cushion. I had no clue what it was, to be completely honest; it was a complete discontinuity, followed by 'restarting' with a drastically altered baseline that remained completely stable until further shifts occurred later.

Since then, fruitions can be called up at will. There can be varying degrees of delay between the intent and the cessation occurring, which presents differently depending on which door is used to access it, e.g. the very odd, often unsettling and visceral 'ripping away' of the dukkha door, compared to the more 'jittery'/'blip-blip-blip-gone' impermanence door. This gets into technicalities and intense concentration, so others may be able to give more specifics.

I'd be inclined to make a clear distinction between willed-to-be/post-Path-naturally-occurring Fruition, and Path moments. Path moments, in my experience, consistently result in that 'restarting' and coming back online with a radically altered baseline that feels completely new in a very unique way, while the day-to-day Fruitions don't result in similar profound shifts; more of a marriage of bliss and clarity in the 'restart'.
   

I have had a cessation during yoga, while moving from downward dog if I remember correctly, but it was not a path moment. 

Hi Tommy,

Actually, for the person experincing it, normal experience doesn't occur during a fruition. Basically, you drop into a fruition and then reboot sometime later, as you describe. I think that's the definition of a fruition.

What I am interested in is what is happening in the rest of the world while you are in the fruition? Do other people experience you as stopping what you are doing or does the activity continue? I guess if the fruition is short enough, nobody would notice, but I am curious.

Agree about path moments. That experience of going off line and coming back with a radically altered baseline is what happened to me at the 2015 Shinzen retreat.

Thanx.

Hi Noah,

Interesting. Did your mom notice or did you just keep talking but not have any experience of actually saying something? Or was the experience so short, maybe during a pause in the conversation, that she didn't notice?

Excellent, I just wanted to be sure we're on the same page since, as you know, it's subtle stuff!

As for what's happening in rest of the world when fruitions occur, I haven't had anyone say anything or indicate that I was 'gone' when they happen in everyday life. I was talking to Daniel about this yesterday and mentioned that, during one of his recent interviews, I was pretty sure I watched him hit a fruition while he was listening to the person doing the podcast. He said that had happened a few times during those interviews, so it was interesting that it seems noticeable enough to pick up on if we're 'tuned in'.

I suspect that, if we've gotten experience in calling up fruitions ourselves over the years, we can maybe notice something very, very subtle in the eyes when someone else hits them. I can't quite put it into words, but it's almost like sympathetically picking up on the shift in energy levels or something.

Great survey, it'll be interesting to see how others describe their experiences of this too.

I've had plenty of them while driving and walking, and it seems to be the case that whatever activity was long as it's basically automatic will simply continue. I sometimes have them with duration during walking and there is a distance traveled during the fruition that makes it clear walking continued. 

I have had them while listening to people talk but have never got the impression that anyone noticed it. 

Most of the time they are brief moments so they aren't really long enough for any significant thing to happen during.

Thanx to everyone who responded to this survey! In summary, it seems like everyday activity tends to continue through fruitions, but not through path moments.

Some of mine were path moments in every day activities fwiw. Maybe in the minority.

She just didn't notice.  But I was pretty dazed by the after glow.