Pre A&P practice

I had a conversation tonight that got me curious about what other people's pre A&P experience was like, especially if it did not just happen easily and they had to work for it.

Pre A&P is basically doing the practice method (usually focusing on bodily sensations at first, such as breathing sensations) and not getting sidetracked by negative emotionality or spiritual euphoria while learning how to do the basics. Some people walk down the middle of the road, some people tend to go to the extremes. Teachers and spiritual friends can help us avoid getting wrapped up in our own drama. Getting to A&P is half luck and half good practice and it's important to be okay with that. The people who tend to have the most problems pre-AP are those who are overly critical of their experience and progress --- I include myself in that group.

Noting is a very good practice for people who need particular help in not going to extremes. Noting is what makes sure we stay mindful at the level of sensations, which is the root of everything else, all the thinking, all the suffering. It's not that the thinking and suffering is wrong, it's not. It's just that we already spend all of our life in thinking mode. What we overlook is the raw sensation of experience. Or a better way to say it: we only spend a millisecond with a sensation, then we make a bigger story about it which allows us to "get away" from the sensation and "stay within" the thinking. Even our strategies for being open, integrating, releasing, etc. can be subtle ways of getting away from sensations. Noting returns us to the sensations themselves, because to note something, you have to experience it and feel it. Doing nothing but staying with noting (for example, noting on every outbreath) keeps us from "staying within thinking" during meditation.

When things get messy, it's important to learn to note the mess. Some people have trouble with this --- I include myself in that group. Just sit in the mess and note the individual sensations and reactions, especially "judging" "criticalness" "frustration" "doubts" "wanting progress" "wanting to quit" etc.
Posting on forums like this can help us figure out what aspect of noting we were overlooking. Basically, any overlooking is the unenlightenment and the noting of it is the path to awakening.


When you get good at this, you will quickly go through "mind and body" and "three characteristics". "Arising and passing" is nothing more than the brain being so good at noting that it can watch individual things come into experience, display its nature, and leave experience. A&P is basically getting so good at the basics, that the mind will do it automatically at the speed of the mind.

You can't "make" this kind of practice happen. It basically happens all by itself when the foundation is established.

One teacher said to me: a master isn't someone who knows a lot of advanced practices. A master is someone who has mastered the basics.

Adding on: In retrospect, one thing I feel comfortable saying about my own practice is all the difficulties in pre AP happened for a reason. The ten or fifteen years I spent wandering the desert, trying meditation and failing, etc. was basically me learning not to be so controlling and manipulative. It sucks, but that's the truth. I had no faith, no acceptance, very little loving, very little trust. I blamed other people for my fate in the world. I never thought I was "good enough". That's the sort of stuff that winds up "blocking" progress. But it isn't really blocking, it's pointing you right at what you need to work at. Sometimes the answer is found in meditation, sometimes it's found in psychotherapy, sometimes it's found in exercise or chi kung or hypnosis or relaxation techniques ---- but if that negativity is big enough, it can't be quickly seen through, nor can it be avoided, nor can it be quickly "fixed" by meditation. It's something that has to be worked on or "cultivated" which was buddha's word for meditation.

"bhavana: Bhāvanā literally means "development" or "cultivating" or "producing" in the sense of "calling into existence." It is an important concept in Buddhist praxis. "

That's the reason why many traditions start with basic morality and charity. A negative or prideful person will be transformed by working on morality and charity and this broader more open person will do better in their meditation practice. It's interesting, once you see that others are worthy of helping, it helps you relate to yourself as someone worth of helping. Meditation practice then becomes about helping yourself and also about being better able to help others.

My interest w/ making this thread is to see if there is a way to make the pre A&P things more tangible.

It seems, similar to what you said, that in a way its about letting yourself die. In my case, letting my meditative experience deliberate itself instead of "pushing" it, but I didn't have a choice in practicing that way, since there needed to be a change.

I really wish people had more respect for this, it does not appear to be the case.

My thought is that meditatively this territory can be mapped so the meditator can really abandon themselves to these insights with more "conviction" or "allowing", since it would actually be something real, referring to something they are experiencing, as opposed to a generalized philosophy of mind, which although it works with dedication, could maybe be trumped by a more exact orientation to the experience.

Femtosecond wrote: ...It seems, similar to what you said, that in a way its about letting yourself die. ...

Where did he say that?????

Femtosecond wrote: My thought is that meditatively this territory can be mapped so the meditator can really abandon themselves to these insights with more "conviction" or "allowing", since it would actually be something real, referring to something they are experiencing, as opposed to a generalized philosophy of mind, which although it works with dedication, could maybe be trumped by a more exact orientation to the experience.

Do you see the paradox here? If you "map" it better, then it would actually separate you further from something you are experiencing.

There really isn't an "orientation" to experience, there is only experience. That's it.

Lol, I mean giving up control. That's sort of like letting yourself "die". That's been my experience sort of w/ how unpleasant some of the sensations are, the thought is, okay I am feeling this and it will be like this forever.

And for Shargroll,

I think maybe that is only apparent in a conceptual way, but maybe when in reality, if someone is in that territory, then they will be seeing it express itself, and be able to trust it more. If someone is not in that territory, then no problem. They would probably be further on in the path.

Hmm thats interesting. I've been thinking I am not beyond the A&P because everything that's come up in my meditation has been fairly predictable and sedentary, like it has been there all along underneath, and isn't because of a reorientation of perception, but just an exposing. What I've heard about the dark night is there's chaos, and that isn't the case with my stuff.

"It seems, similar to what you said, that in a way its about letting yourself die. In my case, letting my meditative experience deliberate itself instead of "pushing" it, but I didn't have a choice in practicing that way, since there needed to be a change.

I really wish people had more respect for this, it does not appear to be the case.

My thought is that meditatively this territory can be mapped so the meditator can really abandon themselves to these insights with more "conviction" or "allowing", since it would actually be something real, referring to something they are experiencing, as opposed to a generalized philosophy of mind, which although it works with dedication, could maybe be trumped by a more exact orientation to the experience. "

There seems an important, fundamental opposition in these statements-- like you "have to die/give up control (but not really; you just have to be cleverer about pretending to die/lose control)"

(nevermind)

Tom Otvos wrote: I, for one, don't have any A&P "experience" I can lay claim to.

No electric tingles? No psychedelic dreams? No magick-like experiences of coincidence? No flashes of bright light as you meditate? No weird sounds? No wierd time hiccups? No visions?

Kate -

Yeah, there is. When this stuff came up I had to go do nothing for days and just sit with feeling like shit, otherwise it would have just harassed me. So at the time, it was reality, there was no guarantee anything about it would change, and it took forever to "disembed" from it by way of observation. Instead of doing something that has actual personal currency, I had to go feel like shit for days on end. In a way it was an investment in the future, in another way it was getting nothing done.

Femtosecond wrote: I had to go feel like shit for days on end.

Where do you think this was on the maps? Three characteristics? Dark Night? What was the nature of your feeling like shit?

Oh yeah that's right, the KFD boards.

It was just being with unpleasant sensations like a knot in the gut or a pounding pain in the right leg. Maybe it is the dark night. But it doesn't feel like it's a problem of perception, like there is fear w/ no reason.

All of the emotions I've had are directly traceable to specific physical weirdness, which has been weird like that forever. Maybe it is the DN, though

Tom Otvos wrote:

shargrol wrote:

Tom Otvos wrote: I, for one, don't have any A&P "experience" I can lay claim to.

No electric tingles? No psychedelic dreams? No magick-like experiences of coincidence? No flashes of bright light as you meditate? No weird sounds? No wierd time hiccups? No visions?

Based on the emphasis in the OP, I presume what is meant is more along the lines of the MCTB A&P "experience", a never-forgotten holy shit thing that changes your life forever. A AND P. Nope. Not here.

I do, of course, regularly have some of what you describe as part of the general progression through jhanas and on to EQ. If I were reading MCTB, I would not have called them that, though and it is only A&P stage 4 in the context of the bigger picture. Call it a&p.

Daniel Ingram, in MCTB wrote: Those who have crossed the A&P Event have stood on the ragged edge of reality and the mind for just an instant, and they know that awakening is possible...They may also incorrectly think that they are enlightened, as what they have seen was completely spectacular and profound.

Yeah...no.

Which is why trying to map your practice by comparing to other people's descriptions is often unhelpful. Particularly if you are in the "no big wow" club and the person you are reading about was in the "big wow" club.

But there are cases where it may be helpful. All of my insights have come in a fairly ordered way and I think were definitely problems before I even started meditating. This could be mapped, they are just problematic tensions in the body. If it can be mapped it should be mapped, and these ones should be pretty obvious if they are or aren't a problem given a little bit of time looking at them. For instance with the ones that I seem to have done away with, if I look at those areas now, they're fine. If someone doesn't have these problems, they'll be able to tell. But if they do, then they have direction. This is not about trying to deliberate stream entry or anything like that. It is just about perceiving foundational difficulties.

Ona Kiser wrote: Which is why trying to map your practice by comparing to other people's descriptions is often unhelpful. Particularly if you are in the "no big wow" club and the person you are reading about was in the "big wow" club.

Well said.

All of my big wow A&P have come from being on retreats. Otherwise, it's mostly been electrical events during dreaming or a flash/flashes of light as I progressed through the nanas during a sit. If I remember right, the "jewel lights" often appear during the third vipassina jhana, which is also a bit of a signal that I was past the A&P.

Sometimes a big A&P happens close to stream entry, which is perhaps one explanation for the "near miss events" that happen sometimes pre SE. In other words, someone is mostly within EQ but they still haven't really seen through A&P. That higher level of energy winds up burst through lower fixations and suddenly they "complete" the A&P, triggers a ragged edge of reality version of the A&P which seems a lot like SE --- a near miss event. Just a hypothesis though!

Femtosecond wrote: But there are cases where it may be helpful. All of my insights have come in a fairly ordered way and I think were definitely problems before I even started meditating. This could be mapped, they are just problematic tensions in the body. If it can be mapped it should be mapped, and these ones should be pretty obvious if they are or aren't a problem given a little bit of time looking at them. For instance with the ones that I seem to have done away with, if I look at those areas now, they're fine. If someone doesn't have these problems, they'll be able to tell. But if they do, then they have direction. This is not about trying to deliberate stream entry or anything like that. It is just about perceiving foundational difficulties.

Could you say this in other words? I'm not quite getting what you are saying, but it seems you are on to something.

It would be useful to be clear in the use of the word "insight" too, as it has a specific meaning in the context of meditation, and a broader meaning in plain English.

Insight as I have been using it: seeing a problem and being able to observe it.

In my case, there was an obvious progression, from the lower torso, to the mid torso, to the chest, and now in the head, with some general body insights in between each (I think these were probably just about getting used to the new state of no tension in the solar plexus, for instance).

There were other insights that came up, but they were more peculiar to my anatomy, but maybe that is capable of being included. Both of them had to do with my right leg, first tension in the hip, then pain throughout the whole leg during meditation.

To me this is an important topic because, while I'm not sure, I think maybe the first two years of my practice could have greatly benefitted from a body-driven orientation.

And people say, there are other things out there, and there are

But they don't emphasize progress like pragmatic dharma does. I think that's a very necessary ingredient that is just lacking in most places

So Femtosecond, are you sure you've never had any A&P? Not during dreams, not by drugs, not by trauma, not by religious events? No electric tingles, no bright lights, no spontaneous body movements, no spasms during periods of high attention? No kunadini? I would be pretty surprised, I actually think it's fairly common for most people.

Bodywork is an interesting field of investigation because it also deals with the mind-body connection. There can be lots of subtle changes in body awareness and releases as part of this work, including many changes in one's temperament. I generally wouldn't call these changes meditation insights, but I don't doubt that insights happen at anytime. Bodywork is a great foundation for meditation practice.

I did a lot of body work, especially yoga and martial arts and massage. There is a lot of overlap, but for me I never got much "meditation insight progress" by yoga corpse pose meditation or even standing meditation in chi-kung. Got a lot of body awareness, though. I tend to think it's easier to consider bodywork and meditation as mostly separate things. Sorta like how learning how to paint portraits might help you with carpentry because it helps you visualize things... but mostly different fields of expertise. I'm definitely willing to be wrong about that though. Everything in life is interrelated so it's not like anything is truly able to be completely separated from everything else.

You might be interested in formal bodywork study. They actually do talk about progress a lot.