Wondering how hard a time people have after stream entry learning to dial down effort instead of beating their heads against the wall trying to make things happen. I spent a few years in the dark night having a pretty hard time but at the same time slowly learning to let go. In 2023 it seemed like the whole year was just about learning the eq phase and getting calmer and calmer as the months went by and the practice just started to do itself. I think in November 2023 I had a blip but did not pay much attention to it because I had obsessed for years thinking I had attained something I hadn't. But after the blip things seemed to change but I still wasn't thinking a whole lot about it. At the same time, I had lost the need for a path or moving anywhere forward. It was like it didn't matter anymore. I just kept practicing and practice was good for a couple of months. It was like I finally understood the practice for the first time. Also some of the first real joy I had felt in years. Anyway, the last few months have been very confusing. Including always seeming to be lost, intense middle back pain, not knowing what practice I should be doing, and the cycles I had before seem to be less stable and more confusing. None of it makes sense. I do know about fractals and that makes a lot of sense now. What I would like to know is how people dial down effort because the effort I used before just seems to get in the way now. I have been getting my ass kicked the last month and can see very clearly that lots of effort is not the key. From 2018 to 2023 I had been doing mostly noting 2 hours a day. One in the morning and one in the evening. Sometime in 2023, i backed off the hour in the evening and just did one a day in the morning. Now I have been doing 45 minutes in the morning after a suggestion from a teacher that one hour was maybe too much and 45 minutes was plenty. Any suggestions would be great.

Also, has anybody had experience with The Lifestyle Approach from the Hamilton Project blog? Makes a lot of sense to me right now. Here is the website.

http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/08/yogi-toolbox-lifestyle-approach.html

Well in general, second path mostly involves sitting down and going for a ride wherever the mind takes you.

Not sure what "effort" means in the way you are using it, could you say more about what "effort" you are doing and why you think it's too much?

"Any suggestions would be great."

1. People like to take two positions on awakening practice and its results. " I have to do it, and will do it, I have wisdom and smartness" ... or ... "The mind has to do it, and will do it, the mind has widom and smartness". But fundamentally they are both incorrect. I did not come up with the great plan of sitting crosslegged on a cushion and stsring at my breath to do attentional training. 'The mind' did not come up with that genius level plan either. Both me and the mind were sick and tired of the suckiness of life and one fine day we were both exposed to the Dhamma. A set of hypotheses accompanied by a set of techniques. I just cooperated because I had no choice, I had exhausted all possible avenues of solving the suckiness of existence, and tried to understand the hypothesis in whatever crude fashion I could and simply did the techniques over and over and over. All the smartness regarding awakening and how it happens resides in the techniques, which in turn are supported conceptually by a set of hypotheses
2. Awakening requires the 7 factors of awakening. There are techniques that develop the 7 factors of awakening. If you find yourself being very effortful - then you have to balance that with tranquility/relaxation. This is baked into the hypotheses itself. As long as you can continuously maintain the level of relaxation required for apanna samadhi or the relaxed unification required for path attainment - effort can go sky high right upto the moon. Then the question is what kind of technique will help you develop this ability to balance relaxation with effort. The question no longer is how do you reduce effort. The answer lies in the ability to shift the sense of ownership from results to process. Can you get process oriented and completely lose all interest in results while you are executing the process. Once that kind of attitude develops then the body mind starts correcting and balancing effort with relaxation So this particular distraction, this particular letting go, this particular shifting of attention back to the chosen object for developing samadhi - can you develop that process orientation and let go of the idea of getting deeply concentrated. From time to time look at the results you are getting from your own log and make process corrections / technique refinement and then put your head down like a donkey and simply execute the process. Remember - you arent smart when it comes to this context and neither is the mind. All the smartness lie in the rubrics that are used to explain Dhamma. Accept this! .... I know it is difficult ..... you will make rapid progress.
3. Once you are able to let go of result orientation and are able to design a process and stick to it (until you revisit the process), at that point see if you can successfully balance relaxation with effort. If you are able to do this consistently then increase the number of sits you are doing in line with the constraints of your life. You dont need to back off from sitting. But it does take time to learn this.

"intense middle back pain"

Do formal meditation lying down supine on a yoga mat with a thin cushion to support your head. Initially you may have to struggle with the hindrance of sloth and torpor, but that is itself a vipassana opportunity. 

"not knowing what practice I should be doing"

Here's a suggestion. Choose one concentration practice which involves specific techniques to  learn how to be relaxaed while being really really bright and sharp and clear in awareness and having excellent attentional control - learn to wield attention like a whip - while being super relaxed. Choose two or three different vipassana exercises. Then do 4 concentration sits and 1 vipassana sit as a programming. so .... conc-conc-conc-conc-vipassana ... repeat. Keep a log and revisit this plan in a months time deciding plan changes / technique changes based on what your log tells you

"the cycles I had before seem to be less stable and more confusing. None of it makes sense. I do know about fractals and that makes a lot of sense now"

You are here on DhO. You have conceptual clarity on PoI stages. Now for one month forget any such thing exists. None of your techniques - not concentration not vipassana requires you to evaluate yourself on PoI stage. You can't "do" the PoI stages .... they 'happen' .... on their own. Once a month to pay lip service to the idea of mapping - do a vipassana sit where you deliberately want to map where you are. After that ... let it go. At any point of time, your log, if it is detailed enough in terms of what you directly experience will anyway give you an idea of where you are on the map. In meditation there is no such thing called the udayabbaya nyana or the bhanga nyana or ... whatever the fuck nyana. In meditation there are no such strange abstractions, there is attention, there is awareness, there are objects in attention and awareness ..... and they do shit! . Be very curious about what actually happens. What happens in perception-cognition-affect. 

I hope something in my writing helps you. Good luck.

Mostly to much effort means pushing to hard to gain insight, pushing to figure out what practice is best, noting my ass off so I can get to the end of practice. If practice is difficult I come out early. If practice is not enogh I will stay in longer. It is like I am being ruled my urges and emotions and I can not stop from trying to control practice. All the time i am watching this happen from a space of awareness but can not seem to give up. There is a state of fear that arises in practice that I need to do more and not less so I get caught in a noting frenzy that will usally push me past my timer because I think more is better but at the same time I am thinking I need to chill out. I see all this happening but I think I am looking at the wrong thing. Like I am still noting all the stuff that is easily available when I should be looking at the doer, planner, thinker, controller. I do think a lot of times that "sitting down and going for a ride" is the best option but I get pulled out of that by trying to make practice work for me. Let me know if that makes sense.

Thanks for the reply, that's really helpful. And I think I understand... this is my best guess based on what you've written (but obviously it's hard for me to fully know what is going on based on just a few paragraphs:

One of the reason I wanted to ask that question is the "too much effort"/"trying hard to gain insights" dynamic that you are describing is much more likely to be a pre-1st path challenge. It's very common to experience to have a non-knowing event and assume it's is SE -- so you're not alone. The blip you experience might have been a near miss, or a temporary formless realm experience, or a A&P "event". 

It's much more likely that you are working through fine-tuning your relationship with the dark night nanas and just need some more work to clean them up. I like calling this the housecleaning stage. Here's two extra writings about this:

Shargrol's Posts Compilation (shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com)
Shargrol's Posts Compilation (shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com)

Overall the best advice is to remember: when things become difficult, go back to basics. Simple mindfulness of breathing, simple noting of something every few seconds, and remember that everything that seems like a difficulty should be noted. Note sensations, emotions, and thoughts -- don't identify and indulge in them, instead obsever what is happening and note it. 

I hope this is helpful in some way, but only you can know if this advice is helpful to you, so definitely feel free to disregard!

Do you think having an unknowing event and thinking I had something like a path and then dropping down from 1 hr to 45 minutes of practice could keep me from reaching and staying in eq? Do you think there is a cutting edge that I may have at an hour? Spending 2019 to 2023 going in and out of the dark night and then eq and just fine-tuning eq &  dk the whole time I thought was the house-cleaning phase. I just can not understand why things are so different unless I may need to be at an hour to get deep enough into eq.

How is your samadhi?

Adi, thank you for taking the time to write all that. Some of it really hits home. It is like going so hard in goal-oriented practice I lose sight of the ability to pay attention to the present moment. This right here "You can't "do" the PoI stages .... they 'happen' .... on their own" has me laughing. How true.

Lots of great advice here. It's worth remembering that relaxation is the practice and is the thing that deepens awareness. Relaxation is how we let go and be here now. It is likely this "effort" you're talking about that needs to be relaxed so that you can start to gain insight into the experiences that are possible beyond effort. 

If you're going to be the type of meditator who uses the stages it's important to understand that they have little practical value in terms of your day to day meditation practice. Practice is always about "just this, right here" and never about is this stream entry? Is this the dukkha nanas. That's not meditation practice. That's just more intellectual rigamarole. 

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Thanks for posting this. I really got a lot from it and the responses. 

you and I seem to be in the same territory give or take. I've been thinking of it as the dying of the seeker for the last, some time. I know there are words and stages and all of that, maps, I guess, but I try to avoid them. It might just be a "me" thing, but I latch on to techniques or moving towards something, and that often ends with me in a trap or a loop where I think I'm getting somewhere, only to see down the way that I've been chasing some idea, some thoughts, down a rabbit hole. 

that blog you posted was good. Thanks for that. 

it feels like riding a water wheel. As you're going up you feel the push up, and as you crest you reach this "fruition" and ride in the sun for a minute and then realize it's not stopping there, and you're going back under again.

I've had long rides in the sun where I was sure it was something, only to find myself back in a hole, barely able to meditate, or get anywhere with it. 

It's funny but I have this thought that comes up and says "how subtle do I have to go? How much do I have to let go?" I think the answer is 'all of it.' Like the dude in the blog said. All of it until it can't even be called 'letting go' anymore.
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It's important to remember that the general "formula" for Stream Entry was/is something like establishing a daily or twice daily sitting practice for a year, then once established adding in a few weekend/5 day retreats, then trying a couple 10 day retreats, and then when they felt ready they would goi to IMS for part 1 or part 2 or usually both parts of their 3 month retreat --- and about 1/3 or 1/2 get Stream Entry.

Heh, not that what I'm saying is a real formula or anything like that(!) but this was the kind of effort that was considered reasonable for first path at IMS using the mindfulness of breathing and noting practice. And honestly these statistics are very "fast" considering that many meditation cultures never entertain the idea of lay people actual making this kind of progress.

These days there are many many many many examples of exceptions to this general formula, so there is no reason to believe that this kind of effort is required, strickly speaking --- but it still remains a very reasonable example of what it takes for many people.

I get what you're saying. I don't mind (I could be making this part up.Haha) ever getting stream entry as long as the practice keeps producing results like the freedom I have attained in the last few years. I have put in a bunch of hours in practice since 2011 and caught on fire with 2 hours a day in 2019. I have been on one 3-day retreat and had a good experience and then did a 4 and a 5 day at home but being at home I don't stay as focused because I'll find other stuff to do instead of retreat. I also have a real aversion to doing retreats and think that what I am doing is working. But the aversion to retreat is probably something I need to look at or ask you guys about. I am going to start a log on the advice Adi gave. Maybe get some pointers, accountability, and not getting lost as much.<br /><br /><br /><br /> 

Brian , I feel you. I have been on a roller coaster for years with this stuff. I am happier because of it but the road seem very long. hahaha

Adi has a Discord server (https://discord.gg/gThXCAaF) where you can read more. He's also very approachable. 

Dustin "Maybe ... not getting lost as much" 

ha! Letting into and accepting "getting lost" is the way of the 2nd path/post 1st. 

Trying to get it or trying to crack the code is suffering, is Dukkha. Or that clinging process is Dukkha. 

My biggest issue post 1st was to cleanse that thinking-believing process that "I am a Sotapanna now, I have achieved something, I have cracked the code of all this fractal cycling"   I am such an enlightened dude!  

Not an issue really. Dukkha is the great redeemer. It all shows it's true nature if one establishes consistent daily practice and keep checking in with folks that are familiar with this path. 

Best wishes! As shargrol told me back in the days of my post 1st "pre 1st is like training to drive a car on a parking lot. Post 1st is getting the driving licence and joining the actual hectic traffic".  

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