well friday a week ago i kissed the gf on the forehead, tucked the "in retreat, do not disturb" sign under my arm and headed out for my "stream entry" retreat. after a little last minute shopping (shit! forgot to stop by the printers to order a few "sotapatana on board" bumper stickers...well..there's time for that.

emboldened by nick's bold advice "you can do it!", i shut myself up at samadhi, the little haus in the woods, with ten days stretching before me to atempt escape velocity. i wanted to get my feet wet.

the first evening was more of a preparation day in my plan but still after getting settled in, frozen prepared food stashed etc. i did my first sit.

it should be said here that up to this point my operating assumption was that i was somewhere in the dark night and had passed the A&P at some previous point in my foggy misspent past. how else was my five year obession with butterfly buddhism to be explained?

first sit, very comfy settled in with some relaxing general awareness meditation, an hour trudged by. alarm pinged and i got up to warm up some food. afterwards, i listened to a dharma talk by Ayya Khema on the Jhanas. Sounded very straight forward and logical, simple really. then why have the eluded me fo rth epast five years?

so i sat on the cusion for the last sit of my "prep" day. within 10 minutes i was in 1st jhana! like a foolish cow, i blazed into secon and then third and then fourth NO PROBLEM! I thought, "well, i would already put this retreat in the plus column if the house fell down now. Bed time.

the next day the jhanas were there but i was steadfast not to play around in them until after the retreat as i needed the big MO for stream entry..ok well i tested them out on a few sits. i had the key now..no problem. the next few days were spent noting my ass off and throwing in a few body scans when i felt a little stuck. Thanks nick! Thanks Tarin! Note, note note!

on the fourth full day i felt something building BUILDING VRoooOOOOM BOOM!! i was enlightened! well lemme check..
whipped out my trusty nook with the MCTB loaded up..shit! i was there the whole time, not emptiness..but that means..

back to square -12 that was my A&P. now i knew where i stood, exactly. well the good thing about dissolution is that you can feel good about not doing diddly. after a resolution to forge ahead, now i had essentially a four day retreat ahead of me to accomplish my goal and a little momentum. i also knew where i was. how could anyone think that is a bad thing?

over the next few days i was able to "induce" a smaller version of the A&P event. i girded my loins for a head to head clash with the dukkas but after a coupl of days of feeling the sensations like a pro i found myself thinking, "hey this feels too good, i had better get some dukka nanas in fast or this will be a write off..but i thumbed electronicall ahead in my MCTB and saw that i was in equanimity. i was "near missing" like a world champ. so knowing that i was in eqanimity but that i had to end the retreat was not a jolly thought, but alas ...wah lah.

now...i am back in the world. aside from meditating at every opportunity, any tips on how to keep the momentum..almost there.

Daniel. Thank you.

ps: if anyone wants to see the schedule, here's my occaisional blog: http://www.ouray.org/blog/

Those notes on your blog have some good stuff as far as I can see and I'd even suggest that you may have gotten stream-entry in this note:


I could be wrong but the part I put in bold sounds very similar to it, the next few entry's in the blog sound like you're cycling from the A&P up to fruition for the next few days. The previous ones all sound very Equanimity-esque to me too so it could be the case. I'm sorry if I'm building your hopes up or anything here, you know what you're doing and you're a sensible guy but it may be that you're still expecting some sort of event to happen when, in my experience, stream-entry was pretty much like what you've described above. Fruitions are just little (or occasionally bigger) discontinuities in experience, sometimes you can miss them but the afterglow you mention is, again in my own experience, more typical of a fruition than the A&P.

When you say "path moment-no. fruition-no" could you describe this a bit more? Also, when you say "induce" a smaller version of the A&P event", would you mind saying a bit more about this and describing what goes on?

There's some interesting descriptions in there but keep the practice going anyway, remember that, if you have indeed gotten 1st path, you'll cycle from the A&P to Fruition naturally until you start the progress of insight for 2nd path. If you haven't landed it yet then at least you're maintaining practice so continue to note states like "anticipation" or "expectation" when you feel you're "almost there".

Keep it up mate, if you're not there already then you're as near as damn it!

Right, I see what you're getting at now I think. The A&P "aftershocks" might related to moving through Dissolution and into the Fear ñana, I've noticed some kind of "rushes", almost like excitement when in the early stages of Dark Night.

I admire your honesty and the fact that you're being straight-up with your descriptions, I said the same thing to Andy on another thread, the ability to be skeptical of your interpretation of experience is really useful on this path. If you're sure that there was no distinct blip or discontinuity then that's cool by itself, it shows that you're staying present with this and doing what you need to be doing so maintain this level of practice and it'll all drop out by itself.

As for formations, this is a bit of tough one to discuss clearly but one thing which may worth knowing, particularly if you're main reference is MCTB, is that Daniel's descriptions of formations, while accurate, incredibly detailed and technical, are unique to him. My experience of formations is that they're like seeing the whole of reality as being a stage set in a play, only it's being swished off to one side as the scene changes to the next set. It's really quite simple when you experience it, but discussing it afterwards in mutually understandable terms is a different matter.

Get a practice thread going and describe the details of your sits, that'll make it easier to get a handle on where you're at and offer more specific advice.