Josh's Practice

Well, I'm going to start off with a diagnostic question, I hope that's alright, being sandwiched between a bunch of legit practice journals I'll have to be the black sheep. I posted something ( dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussio...ards/message/2249078 ) on the DhO not long ago inquiring about a strange event. My language and approach were callow, yeah, and I feel quite a bit beyond this if even only a short time later. Later my great success faltered ( dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussio...ards/message/2324721 ) and I didn't know what that was about, it left me very frustrated to have to spend several days working back to the three characteristics, but when I crossed the A&P again this time my navigation of the nyanas was far superior than ever before, I could nearly call up the first jhana at will while doing any activity, something I could do before that faltering of my practice as well. A few days ago I experienced something fantastic and I immediately wrote it down, and since I'm at the library as I don't have household internet I'll just paste it in quotations on account of being strapped for time:

EDIT: I tried making hyper links but it seems HTML won't work, I dunno how to post links!

"I began by counting my breath. By 20 or so I felt a shift, and every 10 or 15 seconds another. I quickly found myself in what I would normally assume to be A&P but I kept experiencing shifts while still focusing on counting my breath. At a certain point it was difficult to keep with the breath for long post ten counts so I simplified things by looping one to ten. After a bit the chaotic energy and random white lights of fuzziness and kalaidoscope meets ty-dy patterns settled into an opaquely white background and a steady bliss with just a barely discernable body outline. I began noting around this time, two or three part notes. After a bit the acts of anticipation or investigation and such seemed to come into my foreground and those sorts became my primary objects of noting. As I began investigating my body's dissolution or wondering what nyana I was in I noticed it was at that point my severest hindrance, along with wondering if my awareness was diffused enough to the edges (donut mind), or too diffused with too much striving and not enough touch-and-go. It seemed best to just relax and let things chug along, but I was self-conscious that usually when I let this happen there may occur a shift into an almost trance state that I can't normally escape from into a more vipassana feel, even with rabid noting, and will normally end in sleep (perhaps this is pure samatha?).

(con)

So I decided to rebegin counting the breath. I continued like this on and off, noting and counting the breath. Eventually it seemed like there was nothing left, my body was gone and even any sort of gentle approach like breath counting was a hindrance. I could hear sounds and only ocassionally would a thought emerge, far, far into the background. Around this point it becomes very difficult to verbalize and I don't want to risk projecting things that I've read into what I experienced. Very equaniminous and expansive, all senses merging with the background which seemed very separate, coming to reek more and more of the dualistic split, until finally it was like sensate reality vis-à-vis with my bare awareness. Inquiring into the nondual nature or even counting the breath found itself to be a complete hindrance. Finally I just surrendered with a subtle concentration on nothing at all. The dual split seemed to begin dissolving with the sensation of sensate reality sinking into an event horizon, like a little point around my third eye and some little subtle anticipations of "is this it? is it around the corner?" would emerge but as they faded so did the split and then I remember a little flicker, like the snap of a finger. Maybe I imagined it? Maybe I wanted it so bad I projected it? One thing that might help is that I remember this opaque cataracts-like white and with the flicker it was black, then it went back to the opaque white color with an immediate nyana shift. It seemed like an unexperienced nyana, like some raging beast of an A&P with a massive dump of energy. I felt like my mind was very powerful and so I attempted to scale down the nyanas, however, I couldn't manage to meditate for more than a couple more minutes if that. "

It happened to be immediately before bed time and for something like two or three hours afterwards I was having very vivid dreams that were sporadically lucid in which I was cycling and meditating, having lots of A&P events. It was strange indeed, as I typically rarely have vivid dreams that I can remember.

I was naturally curious if I'd been wading in the stream. I woke up that morning for work to my girlfriend's lackadaisical turning off of the alarm clock to find myself behaving in a very unawakened way indeed. While I was still crossing my fingers for a grouchy unawakened state rather than a streamless one I've discovered the only stream to be a stream of terrible meditations ever since. However, yesterday, knowing that all I can do is tough it out and note like a madman, that's what I did, session after session, and I hit A&P again. It was odd how all the terrain was at once recognizable and yet markedly different. It seemed more subtle, more clarity, less chaotic, especially so in the first three nyanas. The A&P packed a piti punch though, it was quasi-orgasmic, not exactly but you get my point, it was almost distracting and nearly caused me to writhe many times, but I used it as an object of noting until it subsided.

Then this last night, the first time I've slept after that event, I had some intense hypnagogic/sleep paralysis episode during which something was causing me great anxiety and finally I remember writhing in pure, unadulterated fear, somewhat incorporeal, only a vague sense of writhing that is. The sort of fear I'd expect to experience before being burnt alive or a conception of Catholic hell. This is all very strange to me because I don't have vivid dreams and I certainly never have nightmares, and the few times I do they aren't like that, perhaps due to sleep paralysis but not an adrenaline producing anxiety that leaves me terrified to fall back asleep for thirty minutes.

Wow, this is an enormous wall of text! I really hope someone can help me though!

If it helps to understand my ground about 1.5 years ago I began meditating, but I didn't really know how to. While having this impression that newbies do "concentration meditation" I set out to concentrate, how this was done I didn't yet know. I wound up getting decent and eventually having a very odd experience which Google explained as a jhana, probably now I know it was A&P or at least it certainly came to be, and then I became obsessed with reaching it many times per day. Eventually I hit dissolution stages, if I remember correctly, because I chalked them up to the "formless jhanas" I read about. At that time I frequented NewBuddhist.com and one day, and very ironically right as I was reading the introduction to MCTB, some esoteric book a friend indirectly introduced me to, my life suddenly derailed. Again, I'm not usually given to these mystical things, or kundalini energy developments. So I am saying this with a grain of salt, but I do wonder if I'd hit the Dark Night, as I immediately became destructive on NB, stopped going, never got past that introduction and gave up Buddhism and meditation altogether. I started up only 1.5 months ago when I experienced that first link I supplied after learning the maps and proper meditation. I've since read MCTB and then peacemeal a million times along with this entire website. I'm confident I've been in equanimity for a bit now... although without, save for a couple times, no obvious signs of dukkha nyanas, only progressive dissolution, so what's up with my practice? I know to just keep noting but some information would be nice!