Some clarification on SE?

Mike Ramos wrote: Well I was missing it!

I was even having pretty obvious fruitions - and in spite of having read MCTB, I didn't know what was happening - other than knowing that I was feeling more awake. My teacher figured out what was going on.

It's good to have a guide who knows the path! (no pun intended)

Mark Peacock wrote: I hear you Duane. After puzzling over whether I could have had 1st or 2nd path or some hybrid and not know it, I decided it doesn't matter. I'm far from "finished".

Ha! Yeah that's sort of what I keep returning too.

Mike Ramos wrote: For me "suffering" (reactivity/getting caught in stuff) was already dropping off long before SE.

Yeah my experience of suffering began to decrease immediately upon beginning an actual practice (that is, once I understood what I was supposed to be doing - or not doing - during practice). As described by traditional Buddhism, Enlightenment is liberation from suffering so I was wondering if there was a significant drop of suffering post the moment of SE, which would clarify it's definition, since SE is apparently (as I conceptually understand it) the first stage of Enlightenment.

For me it was noticeable during the honeymoon period but it did not stick.

Really interesting thread. I have been trying to understand SE as well so I can get a realistic idea of what to look for/what to expect. Over the past couple of weeks I have had 3 blink out moments (2 meditating and 1 yesterday not meditating) and don't know what to think of them especially after reading talk of SE = blink outs and reboots etc. I do know since the first 2 I feel more equanimity in daily life (less bothered by issues) and can meditate better. The maps are helpful but my progress to date has not easily fallen under their descriptions. Knowing that I got to SE would be a useful milestone to work from if modifying practice and approach was helpful post SE compared to pre-SE.

What happens when you sit now Rob, and what happens right after the 'blink out'?

Also, leave the expectations at the door. It's never what you expect. I do appreciate the honesty in this forum though.

Thanks Russell, well when I sat this morning, I move through the Jhanas and got to 4th and spent a good deal of time there watching the strobing to see if there is any discontinuity/breaks. I had a bit of a glitch or 'warp' experience but that was different to last 3 blink-outs I experienced so was probably different (maybe moving between mental strata). No blink out in the meditation this morning. The blink out yesterday morning was when I was about to get out of bed - I was fully awake but had not been meditating since about 1.00am when I woke up and tried to meditate a title then. After that blink, I had a little rush of tingles and excitement through my body (like a light 2nd jhana) and then back to normal. I was intrigued because I recognised it from the 2 I had experienced whilst meditating a couple of weeks ago and also in that it was so unique and very distinct. Since the first 2 blink outs a couple of weeks ago, I am more balanced and detached in daily life and getting into jhanas, (although that has been a routine part of my practice to date) has been easier.
Any ideas? Thanks

Without knowing more about your practice before this it is hard to say. Do you feel like when you sit now you start right at A&P and move up to EQ and get shot back to A&P again. Rinse/repeat.

Understand - I have started a practice log on this site that described my practice etc. However, I have been practicing through Shamata Jhanas going to 4th and insighting from there so its hard to see the correlating nanas that I am going through - it's a point of question I have had all along. I get intense itching on the face during meditation often indicating that I am going through a nana (3rd? or 9th?) where that can occur but otherwise its hard to say. Thus the reason I have found the maps difficult to use.

Hmm, that is suggestive Rod, but like Russell says more info needed. This kind of assessment can be tricky and it helps to work with a teacher who understands the practice and path one is undertaking.

Daniel Ingram gives good advice in MCTB regarding attainments. He suggests a period of evaluation stretching out to a year before deciding whether or not one has crossed the marker they thought they did. I found that I figured it out before that much time had passed, and in my case it was always "this ain't SE" - until it actually was. I'm not saying that's the case with you, but if you haven't gotten a sense of where on the maps you may be during a given formal practice session - with or without the help of a teacher - then it's going to be risky to assess offhand. Keep posting and just do good practice and it will sort itself out.

Thanks Mike and Russell, yes good advice I agree - it is better to let things settle and see what turns up - of course will keep practicing. I have been getting instruction from Kenneth and will continue that and confer with him. I think the perplexity voiced by others in this thread resonated with me and was particularly relevant to what I had just experienced and so thought I would put it out there.

While i am posting my current notes here however, If it helps at all, I have started to post my old log from the wetpaint site on Kenneth's new forum. If you can handle all the frequent whining I have already posted past stream entry in there, so you can see my descriptions of it as well as review.

Thanks Russell - just reading through it now - definitely can relate to it so far - Reading on.....

Just thinking about the 500 or so more posts I need to put there to catch it up until wetpaint went down. Fun

Well, from what I am reading so far, man you really had a tough time - I really admire how you kept at it!

R.E drop off of suffering after SE;

Russell wrote: For me it was noticeable during the honeymoon period but it did not stick.

Same here more or less. In fact, suffering was often more vivid and intense in the year and a half after SE, until I really began to change tack in my practice-orientation. Once I took a greater interest in suffering itself I learned some interesting and useful things about how it functions.

To the notion that maps are only useful in certain contexts for certain practitioners, Here is a very different map of stages of awakening than the four path Theravada model:

awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/...s-of-experience.html

I'm skeptical of this model too; I think there is always a danger of turning one's own spiritual biography into a universal set of stages which someone else could go through in a different order. But at the least this example shows that things can unfold in a very different way.

The common ground, the essence of awakening in my experience, is a shift in underlying view. Some assumption, pre-supposition, that has been unconsciously conditioning experience for as long as you remember (or nearly as long...) is unearthed and dissolves in the light of day, and doesn't come back. There is a tangible sense of freedom that comes with this (the honeymoon) and there is a lasting change in how flexible one's mind is. Here is an article on this site that talks a bit about this issue of views a little bit:

awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/09/...ce-and-non-dual.html

The distinction between 'experience' and 'realization' might be helpful to you, Duane; it seems to speak to your question in a fundamental way. Also the section 4 of this last link goes into it.

Sorry, Chris. You've expressed that a number of times and whenever I hear the discussions where everyone has such similar descriptions of SE as an incomparable event, it always makes me feel I'm missing out. You've also pointed out that realized teachers from other schools often don't recognize the path model as applying to their experience.

The description of the Paths model can be pretty different, I think, than how they talk about kenshos and practice maturation in Zen.

Yes, those links I posted record a very different unfolding of stages that are nevertheless validated by practice. It's good to keep an open mind!

I haven't had any issues with the concept (or the seeing) of "no-self". It actually seems the most intuitive for me and I have always (well since starting a for real practice) been able to find my way there without a great deal of trouble. I feel like I knew these things when i was just a wee lad and sort of forgot it all or disregarded it due to conditioning (impossible to say for sure). I often feel like SE should not be that important because the desire for that is so obviously a grasping, however, from an instruction standpoint, it seems like a fairly important marker. At any rate my concentration is nothing I would brag about but it has improved greatly, the length of time and depth to which I get swept away by reactive emotions has decreased dramatically, but the most significant change I would say is the willingness to drop those reactions when I become aware of what's happening. It has become much easier to uncommmit, because it is just plain silly to be reactive (once it has come into awareness), I have not experienced any "supernatural" states of mind other than some very relaxing spaciousness since beginning a regular practice. In the past I've had some pretty wacky experiences but they are associated with intense concentration states which I do not focus on in my practice and only stumbled on accidentally back before I knew anything at all about Dharma. Briefly, maybe about a year ago I flirted with concentration practice (and was - I think - naturally good at it) but decided it may not be quite holistic enough for what I wanted in the long run, so I've just been (as discussed with Jake) opening to experience, like a non-partial receiver, allowing breath to breathe, sensations to come and go and mind to do whatever it does. I do this anytime i notice I'm not, regardless if I'm sitting or not. Sometimes I'll lean in a bit and really poke around, looking for the "I". That's a fun game because there's always a sweet spot I find just as awareness turns and sees nothing, but I haven't been able to dig past that, or open that space up. Mostly I just sit, and (not try) to let sensations unfold. I've been playing with intention a bit as well, like noticing that when I move my arm, awareness cannot find a point of intention from a defined "source". There is just the arm moving. That's weird, and kind of funny:)

I think I'm mostly curious about this SE carrot because, although my baseline is kind of grumpy, I'm usually amused by how "not me" experience is, and I'm thinking, so much has already changed since I began a practice, how much more intense can this SE carrot really be? Can it possibly get all that much better? It's already pretty good.

Chris, do you think that it's perhaps more productive to model/map awakening based on its "fruits" rather than on specific mystical experiences? That is the more a person has an ability to be with things as they are (which seems to include some range of things like patience, compassion, equanimity, non-attachment, self-awareness, empathy, generosity, kindness, lack of self-centeredness, lack of defensiveness, and so forth), the more awake they are? Or is that just as useless?

Yeah - I was thinking it's not that you can map it, like those things develop in a specific order for everyone. They do seem to be things that generally change for most people, but not on a specific schedule or in a certain order.

(This is my argument with the 10-fetter model thing - it's not that those aren't things that are likely to change in most people in time, but it doesn't seem that they necessarily change in some very rigorously specific pattern that is exactly the same for everyone.)

It seems that most maps/models are useful descriptions of general trends, but are very unlikely to exactly fit everyone, EVEN within a specific tradition.

I liked what St. Teresa said (which I've mentioned before), which is that she saw people come into the convent who had deep meditative/mystical experiences but were unrepentant sinners, and others who had very virtuous lives full of patience and love and compassion, but no training and no recognizable mystical experience in their past, and all manner in between. In general, she thought the process seemed to generally follow an identifiable pattern, which she used to design the method of training used in the convent, but there were always plenty of exceptions and variations. Of course in that world view, God can do what he likes and who are we to make him stick to our schedules, so it's all good.