Andy's practice thread

If you are having cessasions then you would have gotten stream entry (if thats what they are) You sure you didn't get stream entry? What happens right when you sit? Can you try jhana jumping?

Andy, I enjoyed reading your report. Sounds like a great retreat.

I'm curious about the cessations you're talking about. Can you say more about them? What happens before and immediately after one? Has anything else changed in what you experience when you meditate?

Also, it's very possible to attain stream entry without recognizing it as such.

Hi nadav and Aquanin - thanks for replying.

Perhaps "cessations" is the wrong word. I had experienced it at least once before - see post 94. The teacher at Dhammacari called them "the Phenomena of Arising and Ceasing" (at least in English, I don't know what she told the German speaking students), and we were told to resolve to let them appear as often as possible. The only way I can describe it is like a snag in the film reel, a skip of the CD, a kind of blip, where everything "sinks" or disappears and then starts again. Most of the time they are noticed on the physical level - as a kind of split-second falling or jerking in the body or the head maybe - but I've also noticed them through sound: sound stops, and then resumes, just like the CD skipping. The teacher compared them to a light being turned off and then very quickly on again, and that analogy held true for me too - although I wouldn't want to say they are in any way visual, they do have that sense of off/on in images and light. Like a blink, but definitely *not* a blink!

As for what happens before, sometimes I can just be noting and they happen. Even during walking, life can see to skip a beat. Other times they will happen at the end of one of the dreamy sequences I described: like reality clunks back in to gear. The teacher told me that I should feel fresh and reinvigorated after one of these "Phenomena of Arising and Ceasing" - and it's true that sometimes that did happen, the mind did feel slightly enlivened. Sometimes there are tingles and cool rushes, fine vibrations and a sense of pleasure afterwards - but that might just be adrenaline from excitement that they've happened. Sometimes there isn't much at all.

[cont...]

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I've never had much luck with jhana - I managed to land myself fairly hard in the first one about a year ago, and have some fleeting experiences of samadhi since then, but it hasn't been much of a focus in my practice, so jhana jumping isn't something I've thought or even known how to try. But I'm not spontaneously entering deep samadhi put it that way!

As for what happens when I sit, and what's changed, it's more or less as it was. I haven't re-encountered the wonderful sense of spaceousness and ease, often accompanied by waves of gratitude and tenderness, that I had in January, but that came and went at the best of times. The major difference is the dreamy states and these blips. I will try and pay attention to what might be different in the next few days and get back to you, but that's all I can think of for now.

OK, those sound very much like what we call cessations/fruitions here.

"But I'm not spontaneously entering deep samadhi put it that way!" Fine, and you shouldn't expect to. I wouldn't worry about jhana jumping or jhanas in general. Stream entry is really not that drastic of a change and will not suddenly make you into a jhana master.

Time will tell.

Sounds very interesting indeed! Keep us posted.

Thanks guys.

Just sat for an hour - outloud noting felt unwieldy and so I switched to silent noting and then just choiceless awareness. A somewhat sleepy sit, with some discomfort in the body but still getting lots of cessations, I wasn't counting but at least six or seven.

hey Andy, sounds like great time on retreat. very interesting read, thanks for sharing.

I have no idea how and if this relates to your experience, but I just read something from Daniel Ingram who was talking about something called 'unknowing events':
"I remember Bill Hamilton, one of my teachers, talking a lot about "unknowing events", periods of time during which there is some sort of blackout, and I remember that he said he had one while listening to a recording of someone talking about meditation very early on in his meditation practice that lasted some long period of time (I will bet Kenneth Folk knows the story better than I do, if you want to ask him)."
dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussio...ards/message/3068037

Have you re-read this: www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharm...s%20that%20Emptiness

Thanks Aquanin - I'd been meaning to re-read that chapter. Here's an attempt to answer some of the questions Daniel raises in that chapter:

1. Is there the vaguest hint of time passing during the experience?
Hard to say. They certainly feel instantaneous, and yet there is a sense of an "event", if only in the fact that I can notice the difference between before and after. i.e. I am noting, the blip happens, I realise it has happened, and continue noting. There is no start, middle and end to the blip, just the blip.

2. Is there any sense of a this observing a that? A self or you that was there in any way?
There is nothing to perceive "in" the blip (there is no "in"), but I nevertheless feel the disjuncture - either as a snag in sound, or a jolt/fall in my body. But again, this is perceiving the difference before and after, I think.

3. Does it repeat?
Yes. Lots of times. Frequently. But not with a long build-up of nyanas before hand, at least that I can notice. I can experience several of these blips in the space of a few minutes. I just sat for 40 mins and experienced five quite noticeable ones, counting on my mala, and a few others that I let slide because I wasn't sure there were the same thing.

4. Is it revealing something profound about the Three Doors and the nature of subject and object?
No. Not that I can see thus far.

5. Do you cycle naturally through the cycles of insight from stage four to eleven and then attain Fruition?
Again, no. Or at least, not that I can see. I'm just noting, and then these blips happen.

I have noticed that they often come at the end of a dreamy phase or after some wandering thought.

"
I have noticed that they often come at the end of a dreamy phase or after some wandering thought."

Hmm

Okay so here's the verdict from Beth and Kenneth (quoted with permission):

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Kenneth and I just went through your recent posts together and discussed your experience. Kenneth is familiar with the format of the retreat you did and has been hearing about it for years. Apparently, it based on a model that is quite popular in Thailand. Kenneth has always thought that the concept underlying that model was flawed and that people can't be scripted or led through the nanas day by day in the way that these folks do it. He remembers knowing a man who had done many retreats in this format who was not yet a Stream Enterer; although, the people leading the retreat said something like all people who had completed just one of their 22 day (I think that was the number) courses were Stream Enterers. Kenneth's impression was also that the thing that these teachers were calling cessations weren't necessarily true cessations and were just moments of falling asleep, brought on by sleep deprivation.

This being said, Kenneth and I agree that the freeze frames and blip-outs that you experienced on this retreat and after sound like true cessations. According to Kenneth, the ones that come after feeling dozy, sound like a no-self fruitions, and the little freeze frames sound like dukkha style fruitions.

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Since you haven't experienced any change in your base line state, Kenneth suspects that these fruitions are review from your past Stream Entry. He's suspected for a while that you had Stream Entry (but that you didn't recognize it because of a tendency to doubt and because the experience didn't match your expectations). This sounds possible to me. I agree with him that it doesn't sound like you got a new Path because you haven't noticed any real changes in your experience. It certainly seems possible that the scripted format of this retreat forced you back into a past review cycle. There is a degree to which all of the possible variations in the Progress of Insight are a great unknowable mystery, especially when mixing practice modalities.

Kenneth and I agree that the best thing for you to do now is to stay simple and carry on with the practices we've been doing together (noting aloud and noting silently, and at times when it feels right, just letting things be without noting). Stay steady and give yourself permission to relax. Within these parameters, there is room for you to follow your gut and do what feels most in the service of freedom in any moment. Trust that practice can be this simple and that you really don't need to do anything heroic, austere, or manipulative for progress to happen. Notice how fear and doubt arise when it feels like nothing's happening and when it feels like you're not doing enough.

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[...cont]

So it seems First Path may have already happened for me. Whether it has or it hasn't, nothing really changes. I know what I need to do regardless, which is continue to practice with an attitude of acceptance, patience and ease. This isn't something that will come naturally to me, and I'm sure I'll get caught up into doubting, worrying, frustration and striving again and again. Fortunately, I can just note it quietly and gently and keep on going.

Sat for an hour this morning: 15 mins of noting - very easeful, lots of acceptance, happiness, spaceousness. Then 15 mins of Mahamudra noting - I have tweaked how I do this practice after some advice from Beth about how to understand the "releasing" of tension. Previously I had been using "releasing" quite aversively - as a kind of mantra to push away tension. Obviously, this isn't what we're supposed to be doing. Nowadays I note "feeling, feeling", continually focusing and refocusing on the very heart of the tension, trying to find the middle of it, where the suffering is coming from. Lots of thoughts crop up at this point, trying to distract me from attending to the discomfort, but once the heart of the tension has been reached, a spontaneous and entirely unforced well of compassion and tenderness springs up, including a soft, sad, sweet energy which flows through the body. Then I go back to "listening, listening" and noting positive mindstates until another area of tension pulls my mind away from listening. I think of dealing with tension this way like hearing a lion roaring in the jungle - your instinct is to note it and get out of there, but instead you penetrate the forest, trying to get closer and closer to the source of the roar. Your mind tells you to turn back, but you keep going. Finally, you find that the lion is roaring because it has a thorn in its paw. You then feel compassion rather fear.

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I finished the sit with 15 mins of choiceless awareness and then 15 minutes more noting. All very easeful with some wandering mind towards the end. Tension is held gently without too much aversion. Still some pressure in the head, which sometimes congregates around the third eye area. Cessations seem to have quietened down now. None at all in the sit this morning, and then only one or two when I sat last night.

Well regardless if you feel "Changed" or not. I think a congrats are in order way back at post #90 something. So, congrats!

Yes, same here! Sometimes these things need to be diagnosed by their effects. Looks like that's the case here.

Thanks Russell and Laurel

The strange blip of post 94 would be the obvious candidate - but frustratingly, I decided not to post for six weeks after it happened! So who knows. If that was indeed the moment of Stream Entry, it was in about three months of lazy and uncommitted practice, where I wasn't really thinking about the dharma much, skipped days without meditating, and was getting distracted by lots of more mundane things. Maybe I should slack off more in future

In terms of feeling changed, that came after my Goenka retreat. I really felt this wonderfully tender love for everything in the months following that retreat, almost to the point of tears at times, and lots of spaciousness and clarity in my practice, and buckets of enthusiasm for the practice. So maybe it happened then.

Whatever it was, and whenever it was, I feel really fired up and keen to see this practice through to the end. Now to work on that patience thing...

I just reread post 94 and then post 95, and it sounds somewhat familiar, in that I also lost inclination to practice for quite awhile post SE. This obviously doesn't happen to everyone, but it may happen to some of us. So if you were unmotivated for awhile after the cessation, it may have been part of the shift that had taken place. Just a thought.

Thanks Laurel. The meditation timer on my phone keeps a log of all my sits, and I looked back over what happened after that blip - seems I really slacked off, missing days, ending sits early (you can tell I got bored, looked at the time, saw I still had seven minutes left and decided that was enough!) and doing shorter sits.

Beth suggested I try some kasina practice, and I did an hour just now using a light brown cereal bowl. I'm never quite sure whether to keep the eyes focused on the kasina, or let them relax and go blurry so that I "stare through" the kasina. I tried the former this time, and it seemed to be more engaging.

Had some very pleasant energy rushes, both up and down the spine, at the start, and a nice feeling of contentment. This happened in two distinct moments with the first ten minutes, then wandering mind set in, and later some tension and aversion. I think I came back to the kasina often enough, and again there would be these pleasant rushes and a feeling of contentment, but nothing particularly deep or special, although I did go "mmm" on a couple of occasions.

Just did an hour of journalistic style observation - narrating what was going on in real time. I thought I would record it and see what happens, but it turns out my voice gets pretty soft when I'm meditating!

Anyway, there was a clear A&P - body rush, tingles and so on - right at the very start of the sit. Which would point to post-path. Otherwise, the only nyanas I could easily identify were Dissolution (tingling) and Fear ("the willies", shudders in the spine). Bored and dreamy towards the end. No cessations, no third eye pressure.

25 mins of shamatha (poor concentration) and 35 minutes of vipassana. Really tried to notice the jhanic arc this morning, and I think I spotted it - A&P and Fear are, as always, the clearest to me. I reckon I went up and down the arc exactly twice, with the bell ringing just as I came back to A&P. I looked at the time after coming down from the first arc, and it took 22 minutes up and down, meaning the second ride was a lot quicker. Of course, there is every chance that autosuggestion is driving this, and that I'm trying to read the map onto my experiences, but it did seem to conform quite well: Desire for Deliverance and Re-observation were just the points when I wanted to get up and do something else. Disgust was apparent in quivering in the eyes, unpleasant mental images of tension in the body and later a horrible taste in the mouth. Does anyone else experience Dissolution as a kind of faux-equanimity? I noticed this little period of peace and calm - very short, and without the big expansiveness and joy of equanimity - but it's possible Dissolution has fooled me before now.

I'm not going to obsess over this stuff for too long. Just want to make sure that I get some sort of review in!

Busy but happy week this week, partly due to work going well, but I think my practice has a lot to do with it too. I think I experience a delayed reaction from retreats: two weeks to a month afterwards, I experience a kind of boundless happiness, with lots of spontaneous joy and gratitude. Sure, I appreciate the things in life that are going well, but I seem to have more patience with the irritating and painful things as well.

Beth has advised me to "follow your gut and do what feels most in the service of freedom in any moment", so I've been trying to tune into this sense of freedom, release and surrender in all the different practices I do. So with vipassana that means attending to the objects of my experience in the kindest, most welcoming and most patient way possible. Allowing pain in, and watching it lose its fangs almost instantly. I found myself laughing outloud at just how effective this is! But I've also been paying attention to the increasingly subtle ways I can be aversive to unpleasant sensations: hurrying to "release" and "surrender" in the most token way possible, just so the pain doesn't bother me anymore. Needless to say, faking release doesn't work! But it's pretty funny to see how tricksy aversion can be. Think of it as passive aggressive aversion

With Mahamudra Noting I have experienced some wonderful moments of joy and clarity, but mostly I just note "ease" - it really is all okay and so simple. And yesterday I took an hour just to follow the breath, sometimes counting, sometimes just feeling. I don't know whether I hit any jhana - I'm still lousy at recognising them - but I did experience some really wonderful moments of spaciousness, clarity and a sort of blankness - like there was very little to observe and very little to do. I tried to be patient with wandering mind, and even more so with the habitual judging that arises in reaction to it.

When it's going well, I can practice like I do in post 172. But then somehow, I forget or choose to ignore the way out of suffering, and become extremely aversive. The tension in my neck and back really fired up again this week, and in order to distract itself from the pain, the mind either goes to sleep - dozing through meditation - or it runs off into thought, elaborate analysis of something or other, or just fantasies. I check the clock frequently.

I don't know how this corresponds with the Progress of Insight. Maybe 172 was 2nd path A&P, and this is now DN. Or maybe its a slip back down from what was Equanimity. This week reminded me of what I was experiencing about a year ago - tension firing up and a great deal of aversion. But it's different now. I'm more patient, more equanimous, even if the old habit patterns still die hard. And I know that there is a way out of all this, if I can remember and practice well.

Doubts cropping up too - what is the practice for? Does it really end suffering? etc - but all this is daft, since I know, first hand, the peace and joy it can bring.

I've been experimenting recently. With very formal practices such as shamatha breath counting - think I'm hitting at least the first jhana when I really apply myself - and with doing nothing at all. It's amazing how much anxiety and even guilt arises about doing nothing, and how I attempt to deal with this by "doing" not-doing!

I've also been resting in the "knowing" as per Beth's suggestion. What is it that knows? Pushing the answer back as soon as whatever presents itself as a solution is also known. Resting in the knowing rather than in the known, and allowing myself a few moments of respite from suffering.

Some self-enquiry too, plus normal vipassana - sitting and walking.