Testimonies of Equanimity to Stream Entry- Future HP blog post

Just posted three new podcasts on Stream entry and the 11th nana for the Hamilton Project with owen and Clayton. So I would like for yogis here who have experience the 11th nana and/or have experienced stream entry as well, to briefly describe the transition from the dukkha nanas to equanimity and /or Equanimity to Stream Entry in a paragraph or two. All contributions posted here will be used anonymously in the future article to accompany the podcasts, for the benefit of all. Im still making a metta boom boom generating list which i will use when i dedicate more than a week to non-stop metta practice. Get on board!!!






Metta,

Nick

At some point I began to notice something. It wasn't happening when I began the strict noting practice. It wasn't happening when itches and pressure and vibrations became prevalent. It wasn't happening when pulses started showing up followed by intense bliss, energy, and happiness. It wasn't happening when things opened up in a relax chilled way. It wasn't happening when the vibrations began taking on a harsh tone and I got very anxious. It wasn't happening when the anxious tingling began to be very uncomfortable and there was pressure and tension all over and I felt miserable. It wasn't happening when this became too much and I began to see disgusting images and get queasy. It wasn't happening when I felt overwhelmed and exhausted. It wasn't happening when these things all came back in a repeating cycle that eventually tapered off. It wasn't happening when I emerged from this into a wide focus accompanied by mild pain which eventually dissipated into a very contended wide open state.

But after all these things became more regularly experienced I began to notice flickering behind the eyes. At some point I experienced a gap in the regular flickering, almost like the dark portion of the flicker (bright-dark-bright-dark) was skipped so there was a longer bright portion. And when that happened there was some sort of a sensation immediately after (possible accompanying the second bright) that felt like I slipped, fell and caught myself, or walked into an unexpected hole. I felt tingling and bliss afterwards. It seemed to bump me back to the A&P stage.

Being in reobservation was a little like tumbling around in a clothes dryer full of negative mind-states. I kept knocking around against disgust, fear, misery and the whole mess, and then at some point there was a very subtle shift from being in the dryer tumbling around to being out of the dryer watching it. I still could sense all of the negative things going on, some very physical ones like itches and aches, but I was a slight distance away from it. As equanimity built up the fussiness of resobservation faded out entirely and was replaced by calm. I later learned that this was called "lower equanimity." At this point, I was just sitting doing nothing. It was peaceful, but not very eventful. Then this interesting "tickle" started to take place at the crown and third eye area. It pulsed and flickered and became stronger as my attention rested on it. Soon, it became a very powerful experience with a lot of flickering in and out. I later learned that this was called "high equanimity."

I kept going up to high equanimity for several weeks and there was a definite sense that something was building up, something was gaining momentum and would soon happen. Then one night while I was sitting in my PJs in my bed meditating an entirely new experience happened. A line of darkness suddenly descended from the top of my head and quickly went back up, as if a giant eyelid just blinked. It happened so quick I wasn't sure what happened and I was stunned for a moment. Then I started giggling, and a wave of bliss swelled up in me. I felt slap-happy and goofy for a day or two after that, and it became clear that it was stream-entry.

The funny thing is that I had gone to all kinds of retreats, meditation halls and dharma centers trying to get a breakthrough. I even meditated in a monastery in Sri Lanka. But it finally happened at home in my PJs.

The shift from Re-Observation to Equanimity was immediately noticeable, for me. During the last few sits before that point, I always got intensely frustrated and irritated. It was a trigger-happy kind of irritation where something would annoy me, then I would amplify the annoyance, to the point where I would just tense up my body and almost twitch. Then, during one sit, in the midst of one huge amounts of irritation, I took a more careful look at what was causing the irritation, and it all kind of unknotted, and the irritation just vanished. Immediately my perspective went from "agh why can't I observe this?" to "hah! of course my mind will be annoyed at the things it's annoyed at! it's been trained to do that for the past 21 years!" The hugest difference was just a sense of relief, of having finally gotten through something. Whereas before I was detesting having to do any real-world stuff like work, now I was looking forward to it again, and made plans to clean up my apartment, start cooking again, and a bunch of other Training in Morality-type stuff.

Stream Entry was not as noticeable, actually. Basically after that I kept meditating. I started feeling "weird" during sits, in that I started looking at my awareness of things, and my perception - I could actually observe my attention being distracted whenever a noise went off, for example. I'm unsure when the first Fruition happened. One day, during a sit, my mind kind of wandered, I kind of pictured some strange demon-worm-like thing, then suddenly was brought back to reality. I felt maybe a wave of something but I couldn't call it a bliss wave. I thought it would be funny if that was it, but didn't feel much different.

The day after, I had a similar experience. My mind wandered, there was kind of a "snap", then a more noticeable wave, but still not blissful. A bit later, again I got lost, then I found myself at a series of intensely blinking lights, white to the blackest I'd seen in a while. Then another meh bliss wave. However now I figured maybe it had happened, and decided to see if I could Review, and I found I could identify each stage incredibly clearly, as well as bring it up with intent. I also noticed I could get a bunch of jhanas I couldn't before. Going through daily life the next few days, I also noticed changes - mostly, really improved concentration, being able to get a bliss wave just by blinking rapidly and trying to perceive the last blink, and a sense of ease around people, as if I were less attached to my identity. Putting it all together I figured it must be Stream Entry, especially from the Review and what seemed like Fruitions, but it wasn't clear cut at all.

As a pre-stream entry yogi with trips to EQ, the thing that stands out the most when I hit EQ is I feel like I can breath freely. In the dukka nanas it is like I'm laboring and in EQ it is like I'm laying in the grass taking in a "breath of fresh air".

For a year I bounced between equanimity and A&P so often I lost count. I was feeling like a badly balanced wheel unable to turn fully.

I did some mindfulness of death journalling / self inquiry at one point, and I believe that gave me a lot of momentum. I'm hesitating to recommend this - it's definitely not for everyone, so use good sense, but don't be shy to try it either: I asked myself, quite seriously, what the real, honest, true reasons were why I should not kill myself. (This and other, superficially less gruesome, excellent journalling exercises are suggested in the Jed McKenna books). I did this for a week or two.

When meditating, for a year I'd been aware of a slow, clunky vibration, a kind of chop-chop-chop muting of sensations, and the image I pictured for this was "idling helicopter rotor sound". A few weeks after the Mindfulness of Death exercise, I received the priceless advice from a good Dharma friend to pay attention to this, note it, stay with it, grab hold of it - and it reliably propelled me into Equanimity. Around the same time, I made myself a list to tick off 100 days, resolving to sit every day and do this practice. I sat (and walked) between 30 and 90 minutes per day during that time, sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night, over the lunch break, in commuter bus and train and so on. Another practice I did was to keep on silently repeating a meditation word whenever I remembered to.

After that 100 day period, I became aware of big changes in subtle things: not-self was evident when I looked at my hands, for example (i.e. I could easily get into a very subtle shift which put them into sharp focus, taking away the soft-focus of ownership and familiarity). I had not been aware of a particular fruition experience, but I decided that there must have been one, and I resolved to review it, and indeed, a review fruition occurred. So I had entered the stream.

Just wanted to give a big Thank You to the three of you(and all the contributors) for the time and effort you put into these blog posts.
I've found them helpful and entertaining(especially the outtakes, it was like an SNL skit). I feel incredibly fortunate to have found this site with so many yogis willing to help others.
Thanks!!

Call for all yogis wishing to share and generate merits via helping other yogis on the path!!!!!!!!

All yogis who have have gotten to the 11th nana, can you describe how it was getting there (even if you haven't popped yet.)

Any yogis who hung out long enough in high equanimity and popped and got 1st path, could you describe the event pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaase so that I may post another Hamilton Project bogpost on Testimonies of Equanimity and Stream entry.

Much love,

Nick

As a pre-stream entrant, I have been looking very closely at the experience leading up to and including the 11th nana for a few months now. I suppose it might take a longer post to describe in detail every nana beginning from the first, so I will just explain the shifting between Dark Night territory (nanas 6-10) and Equanimity (11th nana) as I see it.
It seems like the Dark Night is to Equanimity as the first three nanas are to the A&P- Meaning, there is a general build-up of raw energy, both literal and figurative, as experience is stripped down to a bareness in the Dark Night. All the agitation, paranoia, fear, disturbance that comes with the Dark Night is a necessary process that shakes you down to your foundation. It's where you are asked if you really want Insight or if you'd rather just go back to sleep (and Suffering).
In some blessed moment, when you are ready to really see and accept things as they are, there is a stunning, simple quiet that falls over you. Personally, I experience this in a very "jhanic" way, in that it very often feels like the shift into the 4th jhana, as the field of perception seems to widen quite a bit, and a stable awareness settles in. Disturbing images or emotions may continue, but they don't "stick" or sting they way they were shortly before. It's also interesting to note that the body has a way of adjusting automatically to this shift, in that often the spine seems to straighten itself out, breathing becomes quite soft and steady, and the eyes, if they were straining before, soften their focus of their own accord.

continued:
As Equanimity refines itself, concentration greatly improves. The strobing light of awareness is suddenly a very engaging phenomena, almost the only phenomena worth investigating. Powerful insights into the sheerness of reality, and the Three Characteristics come to the forefront, making things like body-bliss feel like child's play in comparison. As all of this is going on, a pervading sense of balance and sober interest sharpens the mind, body and emotions into one powerful, seamless whole.
Needless to say, I'm a big Equanimity fan!
Hope this is helpful and can provide some useful data to the project. You fellas behind the Hamilton Project are doing a great service to all us budding yogis, and I hope it will continue to help many more to come on their respective paths.
All the best,
Gabriel

This is partially excerpted from my practice notes, but thought I'd share here.

One of the more profound experiences of Equanimity for me was on day 2 of a 2 day retreat during walking meditation. I was in a room with 2 clocks which were slightly out of synch with each other. As I walked I was acutely aware of the silence and stillness in the room and the brief interruptions of each sensation of each step. Then I noticed the sounds of the clocks ticking. Each sound clearly arose from the silence then passed away back into the silence before the other clock ticked in the same way. The sense of peace was deep and pervasive.

I had a couple more sitting and walking sensations after that experience and it seemed as if I was oscillating back and forth between the 10th and 11th nanas. As if I couldn't hang out in 11th too much, I would fall back and work my way back up. During the last sit of the morning I was getting frustrated with the oscillation and I completely surrendered to trying to attain path. The surrender seemed to launch me back up to 11th and I watched thoughts intently and eventually started to notice a large amount of strobing and flickering.

continued:

I shifted attention to the strobing and noticed I was tightening around it. I relaxed a bit of tension in the eyes and forehead, defocused the eyes a bit and the strobing sort of washed over me. I continued being interested in it but dropped the straining of trying to follow it so closely. I took a step back from it I suppose. The strobing filled up the visual field and then it washed over me and I felt total surrender. Suddenly my heart was pounding and there was a large surge of energy up and out. This disbursed and there was a huge sense of relief and ease. I just sat with this for the few remaining minutes of the sit.

Lunch followed. While walking around, eating and cleaning up, there was a tremendous ease and lightness. I was no longer bearing down to note every sensation, but now, each sensation was just there ready to be observed. I couldn't help but look around at the others while eating. I must have had a stupid smirk on my face. All I could see was strain and suffering on everyone else's face. I just wanted to tell everyone to stop trying so hard and just enjoy the meal. It was the deepest sense of relief I've ever felt.

Hope this helps!

[Content deleted: it was just a copy of # 14. The site (or the browser cache!) was not showing it and I posted a second version]

I'm pre-stream entry and the experience of equanimity still hasn't a regular pattern.
Thanks to the Hamilton Guys now I'more able to notice the progress of the dukkha nanas and the transition to equanimity, but it is auto-diagnosis so 'take me with a grain of salt'

Some characteristics I label as equanimity are the subsiding of body sensations, the calmness, the space, the surrender of the body (it was a sort of a peak experience a couple of times), breathing freely (and slowly) as described in post #5, an equanimous joy different from the bliss of A&P.

From here there could be this anicca-acceleration, the flickering, the strobing, and the build-up of a tension in the third eye area, the energy moving to the top of the head (hard pressure, soft pressure, blissful pressure, different flavors of it)... and anticipation

Another direction is when the sensation of space becomes predominant, leading to a mental trip in what I think are the first two formless realms. I know this could be a dead-end... but I don't try to manipulate the experience, just witness what it shows up. Maybe I need to put more effort in noti(ci)ng the 3C!

A request to the Hamilton Guys: could you point out the differences between early, mid and high equanimity?

Metta,
umberto

Thanks guys,

Keep em coming!

Just posted another article on Testimonies of Equanimity and Stream Entry. Please feel free to post your experience of the 11th nana and if you have experienced 1st path then that too here in this thread. I will continuously add the experiences to the hamilton project article . The same goes for any experiecnes of the 4th nana ie. the AP and/or the dukkha nanas too. I'll add those to the other two testimony articles.

Thanks so much to all the yogis who have shared their experiences. You have been a great help in helping budding yogis around the world. We are getting quite a lot of hits on the blog throughout the globe. Pretty cool stuff to be able to share the dhamma with others.

Metta and mudita,

Nick


P.S. thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/