What will stream entry do for me?

What will stream entry do for me?

Posing this question makes me feel very self conscious so normally I wouldn't bother. However, following a conversation with a friend I feel it's very relevant to pre-pathers, such as myself.

I'm interested in responses from everybody who cares to share. Dark night yogis, sotapannas, anagamis, arhats, you name it.

From pre-pathers, what do you believe stream entry will do for you?

From post-pathers, what did you believe path attainment would do for you and what would you tell a pre-path yogi they could expect upon attaining first path?

For myself I have a sense of what the answer is, but I'll save that for a follow up post once you fine folks have had a chance to share your views. If the first few individuals believe this is a cop-out then I'll post my response sooner rather than later.

My personal experience was that a big heap of tension/resistance fell away and I gained a confidence that I could do this thing - it doesn't mean I could actually hit the circuit breaker on suffering all the time, but I was confident it could be done and had a pretty good idea how to go about it.

"Happiness" maybe remained fairly the same but my overall mental wellbeing improved quite a bit.

Its hard to avoid either under selling it or over selling it - either way, its worth the effort.

You get a SE preview of sorts during Equanimity -- basically things arise which are neutral, pleasant, or negative but you don't ignore, chase after, or push them away as much. That can be a big deal or a small deal depending on the thing in retrospect, but it happens naturally. There really is no way to understand or predict it.

But note that this is also what happens throughout practice, regardless of what stage you are on. So that's why practice is the important thing... and everything else will follow. It's good to have long term goals (SE) and short term goals (sit for 1/2 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening).

I don't remember what I thought would happen. I was at the time focused on my meditation but not on attaining a particular path - just on trying to survive what had become a very intense and tumultuous period in meditation. I'd just started working with a teacher. One week stuff started changing - I remember out walking one afternoon I suddenly realized I didn't hate my inner narrator anymore. I felt sort of in love with the world. I remember starting to see the arising of perception in a new way: a plastic bag blows down the street. The eye sees it. The mind labels it "bag". I'd never seen that before. And then one morning I woke up with a really intense fluxing energy in my head and sense that something far bigger than "me" was at work. I felt like a puppet (no agency, I'd say in retrospect.) Over the next hours it released. I settled later in the day into this drifting connectedness, as if the whole world was one organism, breathing deeply and slowly and connected by a web of neurons. Certain anxieties were just gone and never came back. I think I much more rarely got impatient or angry at strangers after that (clerks, shopkeepers, airline people, phone center people). More personal things could still freak me out, especially my inner psychological stuff, but I also could see the game being played. Even if some inner experience frightened me, I knew it was something to try to work on in my practice and not necessarily true. I knew there was no turning back, and I wasn't running the show. I felt a new sense of maturity, responsibility, dedication, and taking the whole awakening thing very, very seriously. That's how I remember thinking then, in any case.

I am pre-SE, but my expectations are very much in line with what orasis, betawave and giragirasol have said. I came back from my last retreat in high Eq, and although the road from there to SE can't been as smooth as I'd have liked, that experience of Eq showed me what this practice could give me: a wonderful sense of ease, allowing, attention, stillness and tenderness towards myself and the world. But as betawave days, that's what all practice is about. Goenka says much the same: equanimity and attention are the only yardsticks by which to judge our practice.

Stream Entry meant very little to me until I was "diagnosed" by Kenneth a fairly ling time afterward. I take that to be a lesson in meaning. Whatever it did to/for me before I knew I'd experienced it was below the level of conscious noticing. After Kenneth's diagnosis, it meant that what I was doing did have meaning and was actually working in some manner, even if that manner was invisible to me, and most critically, that I could move on with more confidence.

It's only been a couple of months and I'm still processing it. The initial effect was dramatic and disconcerting in the extreme, a falling off of a sense of having a self that lasted for about 8 days. I was on retreat when I noticed that I'd begun to come back. Since then I've monitored my emotions; I still feel fear, but much, much less anger; there's some irritation, but the gripping in the gut when annoying things are happening (like this morning's flat tire) is almost gone. I've had to cope with some inflated expectations--thinking I should be more "evolved" than I really am--and a reduced desire to practice. From what I gather, some people give themselves a break from it, while others want to forge ahead. I'm emerging from a break and getting back to a more modest practice than the 2 hours a day I was doing before.

I still don't feel really skillful with jhana, and I don't know where on the map I am, but I get absorbed fairly quickly now doing vipassana practice. Immediately after SE, for about a week, I'd jump to A&P and have a lot of raptures that were a bit overwhelming, but that calmed down on retreat, where I did a lot of grounding practices (walking meditation, following the breath into the body, focusing on my feet on the floor and my bottom on the cushion). I'd scheduled the retreat months earlier, btw, so it was sheer serendipity that I was able to go about a week after SE.

I am very, very happy I did this and wanting to move on to the next path. I have overcome my fear and aversion to the disorientation I felt in the beginning. One interesting point: before I began this practice, I thought I'd be satisfied just to get rid of some of my more obvious sources of discomfort; I wanted to keep myself intact but be happy. Advanced level attainments did not appeal to me. I even thought SE might be enough.

(cont.) What I've found is that getting rid of some of the grosser dukkhas makes the suffering that remains appear all the more obvious. The changes are more far reaching than just a tweak here and there. So I am now interested in continuing, and I understand that in spite of my experience so far, I am moving into the unknown. Yet all of life is unknown; the idea that we can coast along doing business as usual and nothing will ever change until we mysteriously "pass on" is an illusion. Hanging on to the belief in the separate self just plain hurts.

I'd just like to say that this thread is a great example of why I think this community is so valuable. How many places could Alvaro get such an honest, down-to-earth, pragmatic and first-person response to this question? I love it and treasure it.

"(cont.) What I've found is that getting rid of some of the grosser dukkhas makes the suffering that remains appear all the more obvious....."

I think that's what's characteristic ongoing - the deeper you go, the more subtle the stuff you can see. More and more refined levels of stuff to practice with. Peeling the onion, as has been said many times.

What I find so cool about this process is not knowing who I'll be (or not be) in six months or a year or two years from now. So from time to time I'll catch myself wondering about retirement, whether we'll move or do this or that, and then I'll realize that I really, really, really have no idea, because whatever my desires or agenda are now will be utterly transformed. That may have always been the case, but it's only now that I actually get it.

Yes, Andy, this place is the greatest. It sometimes gives me the impression that the whole world is waking up, which of course isn't true, but our little corner of it is. <smile>

Tee hee. I'm still so stoked that you got SE Laurel. You worked your butt off.

Thanks so much! I'm kinda stoked too.

A group hug is now in order..... {{{{{{ }}}}}}

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A group hug in now in order..... {{{{{{ }}}}}}

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I'm in

You guys are cracking me up. Hugs!

Wow! Thank you all for your gracious and considerate responses. There is a decency, kindness and spirit of generostiy here that I am inspired by and grateful for. KFDh is a rare and special place indeed.

As promised here's my answer to my own question. And please excuse me while I stretch a medical analogy to absurd proportions. If, as Kenneth has said, arahatship is the cure for insight disease then crossing the A&P can be seen as contracting the virus. As such, first path is realizing that the course of treatment you are undertaking is effective and will eventually lead you to the cure.

So, after first path you've gained a reliable degree of competence in the process of awakening. Furthermore, you've seen for yourself that the spiritual journey isn't mystical mumbo-jumbo, but is a real process undertaken by real people that leads to an unshakeable understanding. That's my pre-path take on it.

Thank you again! All the best, Alvaro