Insight disease -- when did you first catch it?

This could be interesting. If so inclined, please describe the moment or moments when you think you first caught the disease.
I'll start.
Back around 1968-69 when I was in junior high school i picked up a book about yoga from my local library. This was just as I was becoming more and more ambivalent about Christianity for various reasons. And this led me to an interest in the whole world of eastern philosophy and religions. So I read about yoga and zen I took a TM course, I went to the Yogananada church and monastery in Orange County, etc. this went on for a while but I didn't have the disease yet.
But, around 1977 or so I got the Kornfield book "Living Buddhist Masters" that had a wealth of information about all these great Theravada teachers including Mahasi Sayadaw. For each teacher he'd give background and then there'd be an excerpt from his or her teaching.
Man, i loved that book.!
Anyway, there was a Burmese master named Sunlun Sayadaw who had a technique for vipassana that included something called "bellows breathing." The yogi would start with this ferocious hard fast and heavy breathing before setting into an awareness of the breath in the nostrils or on the upper lip.
So, one night I sat down on the floor of my room and tried it. And I really got into it. Once I started the touch of breath awareness there was this moment that will be impossible to describe but I'll try -- I became aware of the sound of my breath and then very quickly the fact that there was a body sitting in the room breathing that WASN'T a "thought." Make sense? Looking back now it was stage one "body and mind" of course. i remember being shocked and thrilled.

Hey, I was in junior high school then, too!

I was so miserable during 2000. I remembering screaming to myself, "Please send me something to come out of this misery?" I think I was talking to the Universe. At that stage I had been "searching" for something for a couple of years. Got myself involved in all sorts of "new age" stuff, read the Celestine Prophecy, channeled "angels" and did seances and automatic writing. Then it all culminated in the middle of the year 2000. My mum has always been "spiritual" and she has been the biggest influence on me. Thanks to her mentioning of a Vipassana Course (Goenka) which happened to be held at the main Australian centre 20 minutes drive from the family home, I went and sat a 10 day. Never had even heard about this meditation but several weeks before I had picked up a book that my mum had left lying around the house....A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield. I actually started noting briefly back then out of curiosity but didnt keep it up. When she said I should go do the course, I knew nothing of meditation and decided to give it a go. Ended up missing half of the 2000 Sydney Olympics to go sit for 10 days. Got to A/P by the 9th day. In the last few minutes of one of the hour group sits, I felt the top of my head "pop" and this immense amount of intense feelings of love and happiness descended down through my body and I felt the free flow of subtle vibrations throughout the body in and out. Within 6 months I had finished university and was living at the centre, a year later studying Pali in India and became a monk for a short period in Burma...12 days...haha...but all this within 2 years of my first course. Been on the conveyor belt since then. Dark night yogi for 7 long confusing years until I found the Buddhist Geeks podcast to satisfy my dhamma hunger...from there to Daniel, to DhO to Stream entry to here to Kenneth and I am feeling like I am progressing way too fast now. WOOT!!

June 27, 2009. The day I downloaded, and read, MCTB.

I've been interested in spirtual things for a long time, e.g. trying to understand various forms of buddhism, yoga, but its only when I chanced upon Buddhist Geeks which led me to this site.

Prior to reading the material here I thought spiritual progress was very elusive, enlightenment an impossibility, but now that I know there are maps with signposts along the way, and that people actually claim to reach the various signposts, I caught the disease. I feel like I have a new goal in life to try out this path to verify this myself, and it seems so possible it gives me hope and drive.

1969 in southern Ohio, I was a "high functioning autistic" kid before they had that diagnosis, the school psychologists said I fit the profile of a sociopath (ended up getting expelled). I was very dim, no self-awareness, no social awareness, just striving to survive (that is not get beat up too often) in a relatively bad neighborhood and tough high school. Got sent to a week long Christian teen retreat but was interested only in impressing the goodie kids with what a bad boy I was. One night, sitting bored in religious service, starting looking at a big picture of Jesus and fell into a vivid dream in the pew about a medieval siege with people reduced to chasing and fighting over rats to eat. When I came to I was in a trance, lucid but little thought or self awareness. A candlelight service was started and I looked over and saw a serious, smart kid I admired with a shadow in front of him, and saw lights floating around (had only previously experienced alcohol not drugs up to point). Suddenly a bolt of energy entered my head from above and I felt that I knew a higher love which (being unexposed to philosophy or intellectual pursuits) I could only conceptualize as being even purer than parent's love for children. Turned to look at the girl next to me and she looked like a being of light with translucent layers one of which was her conventional appearance. Service ended and ran to a mirror to see what I looked like, but it had faded. Met up outside with some of my chums and several of them also had experiences. The guy with the shadow in front of him said he felt chains were being pulled from his chest. We were talking about it at night on lit walkways on a college campus and I saw someone approaching us and at some point thought it looked like Jesus.

I asked the others if they saw him and they said they did. He was completely apparent, but not quite near enough to see his facial expression, and looked like you might expect, long simple white robe, long brown hair and beard and we all agreed the attitude of his arms extended to us indicate to come to him. So, we walked toward him and when about 1/2 way he disappeared. We went back to the bridge we'd been standing on and he appeared again. Repeated this a couple of times until we decided he didn't mean walk over to him. Eventually we got tired and left but one other guy and I went back to check and he was still there. Mulling over this in my unschooled way, I decided that even though the few people I told about this were fixated on the seeing Jesus part, that had been pretty unsatisfying compared to the mind blowing bolt of love. This ending up setting an implicit understanding in me that the way come to Jesus was not through his form but inward to a transforming experience of something bigger. Ended up pursuing this with psychedelics, had a cosmic experience that more firmly set my fate (as well as some dangerously bad trips) and by luck found the 3 Pillars of Zen. Been struggling ever since but wouldn't have made it without meditation.

Very cool!

I think I was born with it. Maybe I am some Dead Tibetan dude who took a wrong turn in the bardo and ended up being born to American parents living in Norway... : ) kinda doubt it though. I have always been interested in spirituality. As a pre-teen and teen this took on the only form I knew--christianity. After a couple years of agnosticism I took my a hit of Lucy when I was 18--encountering classic A&P symptoms. Within a few weeks I found myself reading the Dharmapada and listening to online talks by Gil Fronsdal. Within a couple months I was playing around with breath meditation and crossed another A&P... not having any idea what it was. I went through some nasty dark nights between then and finally seriously starting my practice last december. If your on the ride--buckle up!

Hmmm.... I don't really know when I caught the disease. Depending on how you define the A&P event, the possibilities for my first A&P event are pretty varied.

However, the first time I unambiguously realized that I was a dark night yogi was after an unexpectedly large dose of DMT, a very short-lasting but very potent psychedelic. I had had a few standard ~50mg "blastoff" doses which produced insights of the mundane, everyday, psychological type. However, this time I got around 70mg because of adding a 50mg dose to a layer of plant material that, unbeknownst to me and my co-tripper, contained about 20mg of DMT from his previous blastoff.

I don't remember a large part of the experience, and it's quite possible that I wasn't having any conscious experience due to being whited-out for the first part. Actually, I don't even remember inhaling the last breath full of DMT or myself lying down after it. But I remember starting to come back to reality about 10 minutes later (astounding because it normally only takes 3-5 minutes to start coming back), but my psyche was literally fragmented. I'm talking about the famous "wall of TVs displaying scenes from my life" so common to Near Death Experiences and A&P events. That's not what I literally saw, of course, but it's the closest metaphor I can give.

However, it wasn't just memories, it was also all the sense gates displaying their own individual consciousnesses occurring as impersonal processes. It was only at this point that I started to even realize that I had a body -- up to this point, I had believed myself to be a being made only of consciousness, and since everything I saw had the Three Characteristics, I resolved to be mindful and equanimous to everything I perceived since I figured I would be like that for an eternity.

cont...

Continued:

I won't go into all the details of what happened next, as it ended up taking me about 20 total minutes to come back to reality enough to sit up and start blabbering to my friend how I felt like I was enlightened. (Normally it takes about 5-8 minutes to return to where it took me 20 minutes.) But at that point, I realized "Wait a second... stream entry is very non-dramatic, whereas what just happened to me was extremely dramatic. The dramatic, life-changing event that results from being mindful that makes you think you're enlightened is the A&P event. Well, whether or not that was my first A&P, I'm definitely a dark night yogi now."

I forgot that thought, however, in the midst of the remaining 15 minutes of confusion that results from such high doses of DMT, and because my friend also got a heroic dose and we spent the rest of the entire night talking about philosophy. I didn't remember the A&P happening until the next day when I posted on the DhO that I realized why my concentration had taken a turn for the worse -- I was trying to learn shamatha in the middle of the dark night!

Word to the wise: If you don't want an A&P event, do not resolve to be equanimous and mindful and then take a heroic dose of DMT.

When I was younger than 4 I had an extended period of terrifying nightmares. I remember (now) an old grey dusty old man with chains walking past the foot of my bed, and me hoping it wouldnt see me, but he would always suddenly turn and stare at me in the eyes. I remember also being taken into my parents room hysterical pointing that I could see him in there room (in the corner), then turning my head into a pillow and STILL being able to see him. I was puzzled by this, as it seemed not something in the real world, but I had no concpept of dreaming/hallucinating while awake. My brother apparently saw a ghost in this house. --Cue interest in anything otherworldly, seeing ghosts etc.

Had a non-religious upbringing...fast forward to 18 and reading Descartes was a revelation....the method of doubt...a way to investigate the world! Then I went travelling to south east asia, first to India (I had no idea what I was doing, no plans really) where I picked up Kapleau roshi 'three pillars of zen', aha without thought, how to cut through Descartes circular conclusion! Followed the instructions, intensely meditated 'what is mu' for a week and kenshooooooooooooo! My world changed inutterably, the internal way indeed becomes an external way. No lights or anything so probably a pre-A&P insight. My hunger was ignited...so what the hell is REALLY going on?

Fast forward through numerous non-ordinary experiences, and Im 40 now, and the quote which gets me most of all is something like 'better not to start, if start, better to finish'. Some of us it seems need to trek through hell before going to heaven.

Looking back I see this as a habit of life times and feel I was born with Insight disease. Thankfully I am forever being turned around by circumstance and taken along this path. The journey through life could almost be compared to different stages of an insight map (Fractal)

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Hey, I was in junior high school then, too!

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was Creedence also your favorite band?

Wow, Mike, you just caused me a flashback. My first job (I was 13) was washing dishes for a local restaurant and all I can recall from it was cranking up the volume all the way on the radio so that we could hear Creedence over the din of the dishwashing machines. Proud Mary!

Yeah, I remember being super interested in the unknown since childhood. I have a similar memory to the dusty old man thing above. For one I saw a wolf in a superman outfit coming at me from the ceiling and I was screaming in bed,awake, and my parents were a bit freaked out. I also remember seeing the Jesus' heart in a big sacred heart painting in my room beating. I also have memories of a very strange sensation of growing very large that I would get on a regular basis when I was younger.

mpavoreal currently has the distinction of providing the most dramatic and picturesque story.

I've used my best story; now I'll have nothing until 1st path.

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Wow, Mike, you just caused me a flashback. My first job (I was 13) was washing dishes for a local restaurant and all I can recall from it was cranking up the volume all the way on the radio so that we could hear Creedence over the din of the dishwashing machines. Proud Mary!

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Creedence, Canned Heat, James Taylor, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, Steppenwolf, Blood, Sweat and Tears, The Who, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, The Band, Bob Dylan, Chicago Transit Authority, Albert King, Cream.

"I've used my best story; now I'll have nothing until 1st path."

I have a feeling your SECOND BEST story is pretty dramatic.

Christian - Psychedlic like experience - 3 pillars of Zen....

WELCOME TO THE CLUB!

I guess the Insight practice bug got me when I read MCTB in Oct. 2009

I actually posted a whole thread about my dharma story the other day. lol
here: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/40...ny%27s+Adventure+Log

"Creedence, Canned Heat, James Taylor, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, Steppenwolf, Blood, Sweat and Tears, The Who, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, The Band, Bob Dylan, Chicago Transit Authority, Albert King, Cream. "

Man, Mike, you sound very much like my dad. I grew up to that music.

The Doors!

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The Doors!

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Buffalo Springfield.