question about insight stages

hello everyone.
I'm curious about a specific thing regarding going through the insight stages. Is it possible reaching lets say...the dukkha nanas only in five minutes into the formal sit?

Yes it is.

Depending on where you're at in practice the time you spend cycling varies from staying in one stage for days, weeks, or perhaps even months, to moving through all the stages in a day, or in hours, minutes, or even seconds. This can be noticed both on and off cushion.

Yes, also because -- even if you are not at a stage where you are automatically cycling during normal daily activity or moving very fast through nanas -- you might sustain enough off-cushion mindfulness to bring yourself up into that territory.

Or you could imagine sitting and getting up into DNs, getting up from the cushion and doing other stuff with a modicum of awareness, and coming back to the cushion and, quite naturally, finding that you are very quickly re-established in the DNs.

However, I would say that some of the emotional markers of the DNs can sometimes very much be part of the earlier nanas. So one has to keep other evidence in mind, too, for identifying the nana, such as width of focus of awareness, types of sensations, and context. One could otherwise be easily fooled.

For example, my recent sits could be emotionally characterised as follows (with nana numbers): 1-3) disgust/fear 4) A&P=a bit lighter on the disgust and fear 5-10) even stronger disgust/fear 11) lots of accepting, calm space around rising and passing spasms of disgust/fear. Fun! In other words, in broader cycling terms, one can infer that the dark night is flavouring every nana.

so how can you actually know what nana are u in?

Have you read MCTB or even the links under 1st gear on this site? Good descriptions here as well: alohadharma.wordpress.com/the-map/the-physio-cognitive-stage/

The nanas are not always clear and do not worry too much if you cannot detect every little shift. Usually, in retrospect, things are more clear. Sometimes it is very hard to distinguish between certain nanas. It is easy to think you are in the dukkhas when you are in the 3C's, some people think they are in EQ when they are really in Dissolution, etc.. So, just be clear in your descriptions and see if they line up in a way to what people have written about them.

yes i have read those.
the thing is I'm trying to figure out what stage im in also by looking at everyday experiences. People here say they found themselves spending years in the dark night and I'm trying to see if I can say that about myself also. And you can always rationalize your anger and sadness with the notion that you are "only experiencing dark night". The problem is that you cant tell when it is time to do something practical about your life that doesn't has to do anything with the practice.

You can be in more than one stage at once - There can be short-term and longer term stages that overlap, at least it seems that way to me. I would say it isn't very important to know which stage is running the show - just see *what* is running the show! As for practical matters, I learned a while back that listening to my emotions when it came to decision making was a bad idea, since they can apparently happen on their own outside of logical cause and color everything. I have had to watch my state carefully and make sure that 'if upset keep mouth shut', and its become pretty clear that *most* times the mood arises first and tries to bend everything else to its will, which I avoid by not acting on it. Its not always 'dark night' either, just the way my brain works. I haven't found a way of making hard decisions easier though - but at least I haven't left my wife over some randomly-causes anxiety over not feeling loved or something like that. Not sure where I would be without some sort of practice!

Yes, you have your cutting edge, which is the highest you can get up to each and every sit. And then you can cycle throught the nanas during the day.

Always, take care of yourself off-cushion in any way you need to, dark night or not.