Testimonies of the Dark Night for a future HP blogpost

Hello yogis,

Owen, Clayton and mysefl just finished a couple of podcasts which we will post soon to our blog on the dark night/dukkha nanas.
I would also like to post a future article including some testimonies of yogis here on how they experienced their first or first few dark nights or even current dark ngih;, how they managed or didn't manage it; did it screw your life up? Did you manage ok, what you found or find useful to navigate it, what you found exhasberated and made it worse? etc.

This thread is dedicated to Owen and Clayton. Hehe! or rather

Future boom boom metta generating sessions will include a list of all yogis names who post their experiences here for the benefit of all the chronic dark nighters out there seeking help.

BOOM!

Nick

Hey guys,

Just put up a couple of new podcasts on the Dukkha nanas that we recorded last night.
thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/

Enjoy,

Nick

Just listened to the first one. Many thanks to Nick, Owen, and Clayton.

I believe I'm currently in the Dark Night, maybe sliding in and out of equanimity. I'll try to describe the initial onset (about a month ago). I had been gaining momentum in my practice and felt like I was making a lot of progress. Suddenly, it felt like I had lost my concentration. I had lots of doubt about my practice and thought that I had regressed.
Sitting was difficult and off-the-cushion noting as I went about my day became a struggle. I had an overwhelming sense of misery for no discernable reason, especially when I was alone at night. I felt a lot of self-loathing and loneliness. I felt very judgmental and negative towards my friends (fortunately I caught this quickly and knew to stop myself). Psychological stuff that I had put on hold suddenly became urgent, almost to the point of obsession. I had lots of headaches and pressure in the forehead throughout the day. I had trouble concentrating at school and felt very impatient in my classes.
I had no idea that I was working through the dukkha nanas because I didn't think I had crossed the A&P. I was waiting for a huge event. In retrospect there were a few experiences that fit but they weren't as grandiose as I expected. Once I met with Kenneth and he told me what he thought was going on, I immediately felt a huge sense of relief - I thought I had regressed, but I had actually made progress! Knowing that I was in the dark night made it a lot easier to objectify and to contain the negativity when it arises.

After the first A&P experience I had during formal meditation (with journaling on this site) I remember waking up with really bad anxiety. This was after a couple of really good days where I felt on top of the world. I was expecting it to pass, but I ended up just feeling miserable the whole day. There was a nausea that kept coming up, terrible sadness, aches and pains. I remember writing that it was the worst day of my life. I felt crushed. At some point I noticed that there seemed to be a pattern to it, and "Ah-ha" perhaps this is the dark night. I sat with it in meditation after consulting the maps and saw a pattern that seemed to correspond with the dukkha nanas. I figured I must have been reobservation as the nanas seemed to be repeating over and over. There would be a period of anxiety, then a period of aches and pains/sadness, then tension and nausea and then a sense of being overwhelmed and it would repeat. I stayed with it for a good number of cycles and it eventually got lighter and lifted. I was very glad to have the maps at that point. Up until I had the ah-ha moment I was deeply embedded and taking it all very personal.

thanks for the encouraging stories guys...

Heh, I've had one pretty intense dark night, it lasted for 9 months, included misery, despair, panic attacks, inability to concentrate (to the point that it was difficult to do simple tasks), inability to socialize (because of bad feelings, but also because I had a hard time following and understanding what others were saying, due to lack of concentration), loneliness, auditory hallucinations, mild paranoia, treating my friends and family badly, long episodes of nostalgia and regret, obsessive thoughts (usually about death), etc, etc, etc.

But to keep up the good-spirit of the dark-night descriptions so far, I should also say that I have really learned a lot during this long-winded dark night. The single most important thing I learned, a piece of wisdom that I really treasure was this: during the dark night process, it became palpably obvious that my perception of the outside world critically depended on how good or bad I felt.

Because the shifts between happy and unhappy were so drastic and happened so fast, I really had a chance to observe how strongly mood distorted perception. Time and again I witnessed that: when I felt happy, things worked out well, life was fun to live, everyone was great; when I felt unhappy (often just the next day), everything came tumbling down, I hurt myself and others, life was torture, people and the world sucked.

And if this is the case, I concluded, changing myself on the inside, through meditation, really might work. And this learnt lesson fueled my determination to meditate --- and it did work!

In a couple of days, I will start a practice of non-stop metta generating. That means I will be continuously sending out metta to all beings for one week straight. If you post your dark night experiences for the benefit of all the chronic dark night yogis and chronic dark night yogi-to-be out there, I will include your name specifically on the list of meta recipients (not difused metta ala all beings type hehe), just for you. I aim to see if what Dipa Ma had cultivated (the siddhi of powerful metta generation), is real. So get on board, for the benefit of all.

THanks guys!

Metta!!!!!!!!

BUMP!!!!!! WHO WANTS TO HELP ME WRITE AN ARTICLE FOR THE HAMILTON BLOG. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!

As in believe my initial A&P to have been around age 7, there must have been a dark night following it. I don't remember anything specific from that time, but I have a memory from a few years later of taking down a bathroom mirror because I couldn't stand watching myself in the mirror each morning. Might have been some early teenage thing, though.

There is a discernible pattern post teen-age of me severing ties in a burning-all-bridges fashion: moving out in a huff and marrying at age 20 (after a memorable A&P experience), ditching an academic career and instead selling bread and vegetables in a supermarket at age 26 (after another memorable A&P), terrible rows with my in-laws and moving to a different city at age 32 (after yet another A&P). A couple of years ago, I read MCTB and found a framework for these occurrences, making them understandable in retrospect. If that 6-year-cycle is anything of an indication, I'm managing pretty well now at age 38. There was a bit of a wobbly time regarding my work situation last spring, but I was acutely aware of it and even though it wasn't at all easy, I was able to avoid doing anything rash or stupid.

The previous dark nights, I wasn't so successful. But something good seems to have come out of each one: I'm still married to the same wonderful woman; I found interesting work in I.T. after a year of filling shelves in a supermarket; and we were able to buy a nice house in a small village after spending two years in a bleak suburbia, and I'm still on talking terms with my in-laws. Oh, and I finally got through that first Dark Night this past summer.

Cheers,
Florian

I'd been meditating pretty consistently for about 7 years (after a previous 7 of spotty practice) when I read MCTB. That's when I first heard about the A&P and the Dark Night, and I became morbidly terrified about it. In retrospect, I am pretty sure I've experienced several rounds of A&P/Dark Night. It might have had something to do with several months of medically-unaccountable chronic headaches I had about 3 years ago; also with a tendency to periodic obsessional interests, in both secular and spiritual subjects, that go back many years, that made me wonder if I had a hypomanic tendency (doctors said not, but maybe slightly OCD).

So when I hit it on this last round in October, I was "prepared" but afraid. Armed with Daniel Ingram's warnings, I was pretty worked up with fear- but in retrospect I was pretty well-equipped to go through it, because I treated all the weird stuff that came up on its own terms. I made sure not to connect the "stuff" with other people or outside circumstances; I carried on with life as normal; I kept it to myself but didn't try to deny it was there, either. It was a high-pitched way to live. I just tried to keep taking things apart as they came up, and a couple of meetings with Kenneth helped to keep me on the ground. There were fleeting moments of the deepest terror I have ever experienced, though strangely "OK" because I knew there was nothing I was afraid of. There were some of sleepless hours some nights, watching my whole body and mind pop-pop-pop like popcorn. But it only went on about 3 weeks, for which I'm very grateful, because sometimes it was really annoying- a constant, abrasive BLECCH feeling in my gut. It also ended without warning. I had guests over a weekend and made a resolution to stay fully with things for that time. I did, and when my guests left, I simply did not resume the DN stuff-- equanimity kicked in. I feel like I got off pretty easy.

Hi guys,

Just posted an article on Testimonies of the Dark Night on the hamilton Project Blog. Owen, Clayton and myself also just did a couple of podcasts on Equanimity and Stream Entry as well. If you want, you could still post a description of a dark night expericne and i will continuously update the blog article adding whatever is written here. For the benefit of all

Thanks,

Nick.

Awesome collection of material there guys. A wonderful resource. Glad to have been able to contribute as well!