I think this is equanimity. Can't say i'm sure if it's high yet, but some weird things keep happening that feel like I'm paying too much attention and near-missing fruition. Mahasi Sayadaw's descriptions are extremely familiar for what I'm going through right now. Thoughts?
History: I powered up concentration first doing nostril-anapana, fell into the first 2 jhanas and the sheer power of concentration gave me a spontaneous A&P. I gave myself a crash course in Mahasi noting and broader mindfulness, and stabilized the progress of insight I'd already had; but after that whole weird meditating-into-dreams phase with the waves of obsession with practice and the intense sexuality and the "I am so powerful, I turn everything into shimmering pinpricks when I want", things got scary and lonely and impermanent and dissociatey--hello Dark Night. Spent some confused time during Dissolution (visuals never have stopped shimmering ever since, and I've had the damnedest "3rd eye" and eyeball and crown vibrating tensions ever since.) trying to develop concentration and insight both at once, but soon figured out 3rd and 4th samatha jhanas, with a taste of Infinite Space just once. They didn't hold, so I did vast amounts of noting. Started getting the fear wave in the middle of practice after a&p. Not surprisingly, it wasn't long after that I had major posture problems after that--nothing seemed quite right, and concentrating was a nightmare. The only consolation was discovering randomly at a meditation group that doing Mudita practice would directly turn my headache into fierce rapture. Brahma-viharas are far cleverer than people give them credit for.
Anyway, after a total bear of a sit, in agony AND falling asleep and just tired of all of this and wondering if there's any point and if this does any good at all, I had a long night's sleep and the next day was different. Of all things, I was reading the Sutra of Hui-Neng, which is early enough in the history of Zen to still talk about it as a vipasyana practice, and found myself spontaneously getting wildly concentrated in a choiceless-awareness mode (which I've never, ever done before, because normally I get too distracted by content). I figured I should get on the cushion, so I did. Planned a 45 minute sit, but it ended up going an hour and a half and only hurt a little after I finished.
During the sit, I integrated some things from the Four Foundations I've been working on, and something SHIFTED. Been working on getting all the sense-doors integrated into a wide panorama, and this time that was almost effortless. Spent the effort to note feeling-tone pairs, and THAT became effortless, and all the gross sensations I had were breaking apart into these rich braids of complex vibrations of pleasant/unpleasant/neutral all intermixed---nothing was purely just one, and everything vibrated and changed through mixes of them all. I added in attraction/aversion/inattention/attention and suddenly got another shift, this one leading to a truly choiceless, labelless feedback loop of concentrated insight--and a non-self feeling that I can only call equanimity; unpleasant sensations would either dissolve into feeling clusters or would remain but weren't something I had to worry about, because they were just this THING over there (not-self). Sights were wrapped around in total globe of 4th jhana but the vibration/impermanence was obvious. Feelings were that same interbraiding of shimmering tones, but the cognition of those feelings seemed to have echo-vibes in the back of my neck and in my chest and stomach, and I noticed those, and noticed the noticing, and got all kinds of thought-echoes. Then spontaneously thoughts bubbling in and out became an object (but moved so fast their content was invisible, just the rise and fall of them). All of this was feeding back on one another, the seeing and the seeing-the-seeing and the noticing and the thrill of noticing and the noticing-the-thrill-of-noticing. Pressure on the forehead finally broke open into a cloud of pleasant/unpleasant/neutral vibes for the remainder of practice, and I could watch the echo attraction-aversion vibrations, and watch the watching. But no matter how much I kept spontaneously asking "where am I?", I couldn't find "me", though those individual cognition-echo subtle physical feelings were noticeable either between my ears or in my spine or chest or forehead or behind the eyes, and asking would often change my eye-focus--thus setting off ANOTHER round of feedback between noticing and noticing-the-noticing.
In the middle of all this, every once in a while I'd get really in the zone noticing sensations and feelings etc, and following the feedback loops, trying to follow the winking-out in between the visual flickers, and suddenly there would be this rising thrill, but it would turn quickly into deep bodily too-much-energy and thrill/anxiety. Huge effort required to retain equanimity, noticing the aversion and attraction, and would hold it for a while and reality would really seem to shake, then my body would get too excited and I'd find myself pulling back to calm it down. There were a couple of moments that genuinely felt like I was going to fall in between the frames of something but the burst of adrenaline stopped it cold.
Today, basically the same practice happened, but with more familiarity, and therefore more not-self when these feedback loops happened. There was a moment when all visuals dissolved outward and I think I spontaneously pushed into Infinite Space again, and my insight was taking apart the subtle vibrations left, when again a major feedback loop of adrenaline welled up--yes, it was a bunch of unpleasant (and some pleasant/neutral) hot pinprick vibrations through the chest and stomach, and I could watch the aversion as well and it disembedded. . . but ultimately something became too much. (Checking later, nothing was weirdly too fast about my heart rate or anything. it just. . . happened.)
At peak experiences, I'm going to quote Dan Ingram on the quality of my choiceless awareness insight. I'm swerving in and out between 7 and 8:
7) To be able to directly and continuously perceive the sensations that make up the coarse background components also in that same light of strong, direct vipassana awareness, meaning direct comprehension of the Three Characteristics of not only the foreground objects, but things like rapture, equanimity, fear, doubt, frustration, analysis, expectation and other sensations in the periphery, as well as other objects as they arise, such as thoughts and the component sensations of feelings as well as the primary object or objects, assuming one is even using primary objects at this point, which is not necessary.
8) To be able to do #7 very well and then add core processes such as the sensations that seem to make up attention itself, intention itself, memory itself, questioning, effort, surrender, subtle fear, space, consciousness, and everything that seems to be Subject or Observer or Self all the way through the skull, neck, chest, abdomen and all of space such that nothing is excluded from this comprehensive, cutting, piercing, instantly comprehending clarity that is synchronized with all phenomena or just about to be.
Is this what Equanimity feels like? There's very much the seeing and the seer in a curious disjunct that still vibrates in interference. Sometimes sensations just vanish even on a subtle level and I chase the subtlest waves beneath. And some part is always chasing the "I" doing the chasing, and getting a little stymied at the recursion level. Every once in a while I might detect a tiny blip in attention, a wee bit of missed time, but not carefully enough to be drawn in.
Anything I should be doing? Lately my practice involves a half-hour mostly concentration power-up in the morning, followed by some metta and a pinch of other immeasurables, some walking meditation and general mindfulness mid-day, and insight work in the evenings --an hour or more a night, since this shift. Any advice working with the adrenaline-spike? Also, should I just let my awareness roam and tear things apart, or should I be actively trying to widen it further?
Thanks in advance.