Stream Entry
May, 2022
Rockleigh, NJ
Below are my notes from the night I attained Stream Entry and the days that followed:
It happened last night. I took a large dose of mushrooms and a LOT of marijuana, and at first, it was REALLY hard - I castigated myself for all of my recent failings, all the places where my actual morality hadn’t aligned with my desired morality, and came to terms with it all, building equanimity. I then went into a reverie about my home and my wealth, coming to the understanding that while it was wonderful to have these things now, life would continue without them, and that would be fine. I then started thinking about myself again as a collection of modules, all of them jostling for control -- that there was no deterministic "I" there, just the story I was telling myself to create a sense of continuity. At the same time, I felt my morality snap into place, like the completion of a foundation for a house, and suddenly these investigations started to become experiential, rather than theoretical.
Without any directed effort, I started to investigate the thought patterns in my head with equanimity, and I felt myself pushing past those rails of discomfort, refusing to "forget" with that mental glitch that happens whenever I previously pushed towards fruition. I think the previous loss of attention at those moments was the mind not being willing or ready to face the three characteristics head on. I felt myself reach towards fruition several times, bounce against a ceiling and fall back. There was no frustration -- in the moment, it was almost like the feeling you get when you are about to fall asleep -- not dreamlike, and not a reverie, but with a similar lack of outside reflection; there was no moment of "I'm reaching for fruition, oh my god!". It was just happening, and I was 100% absorbed with that happening in that moment.
And then, suddenly, it all came together. There was an instant when my mind locked onto suffering and no-self, like tuning a radio, for just a fraction of a second, and everything changed.
My entire field of experience, the entire experiential universe, transformed into a sphere-like shape, and that sphere contained absolutely perfect connection with everything else. There was a clarity of understanding that there is at a certain fundamental level absolutely no separation between me and everything else. Total and complete connection.
And then it imploded, like my mind simply couldn't handle this experientially for more than a fraction of a second. It felt like my brain rebooted, and when it came back on line, everything was different. It was like circuitry that I had been building in my brain for the past months without even realizing it suddenly activated, and my brain fundamentally saw reality in a different way. It was like a software upgrade.
In the immediate aftermath of fruition, I was initially simply overwhelmed with having attained it, although also absolutely clear that I had in fact attained it. I was too caught up in the moment to catch all of the sensations, but within minutes, I started reading MTCTB, hunting quickly for the section on the buildup to fruition and the immediate aftermath, so that I could make better sense of what was happening. It was all there. Everything I had just experienced, laid out in perfect detail. I felt an upwelling of gratitude to Daniel Ingram for providing me with these astonishingly detailed and clear maps. Everything I read suddenly made sense in a way it hadn't before.
It's too early to say exactly what is the afterglow from the trip, and what is the afterglow from the fruition, and what is permanent. I know that something is fundamentally different. I just need to tease out exactly what that is. There is an abiding sense of equanimity and peace at the moment, as well as a fundamental ability to see my reactions as they are happening mentally, but before I actually act on them. I think the afterglow of the trip and the fruition are already fading, so what's left may be what will be in a more permanent sense.
I tried again to reach fruition today, but kept getting interrupted by various events. However, there were a few times when I felt that reverie-like feeling while contemplating the three characteristics begin again that leads to the doors, so I am confident that I will be able to obtain additional fruitions. The first time it happened, I saw the modules in my brain like a school of fish, moving chaotically. All of a sudden, they came into alignment with each other, all moving in the same direction. I felt no-self click in and knew that if I made it through the doors on this try, it would be the no-self door. And when I considered the second characteristic, my mind settled on impermanence, and my mind began looking with curiosity at how this particular door might open. But I was interrupted before I could hit conformity.
During those sits, I had two insights. First, the striving for a second fruition was itself an obstacle to obtaining it. Life would happen as it happened, and if I never obtained another fruition, I have been given a gift, regardless. The second insight was how it is in the moment after a sensation hits a sense door when the modules have the opportunity to take over. If vigilant to sensations, they cannot. I described and refined the experience when I wrote a message to Sam:
I understand sankharas! Like really understand them. Especially how Goenka says they fuel consciousness. I had always thought that Goenka meant that literally. That they are a fuel that gets consumed, and it is always our continuous creation of new sankharas that replenishes the fuel. But that’s not at it at all. They don’t fuel consciousness in the sense of getting consumed. They fuel consciousness in the sense that they ARE consciousness. They are the modules; the algorithms in our brains. They get created from reactions to experience, and they are continuously competing to take over and gain control of the organism. They are only able to do so in the moment after a sensation hits our sense door, when we are open to blind reaction. By maintaining awareness of our sensations at all times, the reaction pattern doesn’t develop, and whatever module (sankhara) that was trying to take over becomes weaker and eventually evaporates.
5/16/2022
I woke up early this morning and tried to meditate for about 50 minutes. It was a very successful meditation, in that I was effortlessly able to drop into access concentration, and from there begin the progress of insight. I moved through the stages, feeling each distinctly (although not with the depth of resolution that I would like). I couldn't move beyond low equanimity today -- I kept dropping back.
5/17/2022
I worked hard today on just staying with the sensations, not recoiling, not reacting. At Rob’s weekly meditation meeting, he spoke about Sharon Salzberg's book, and how before speaking with someone, you should ask yourself three questions: Is it true? Is it useful? Is it kind? I found that extremely helpful. Before the class, I told Rob about my attaining fruition. It was immediately clear he hadn't. There was no smile of welcome, just a mask of non-reaction as he struggled to hide his emotions. Class started, so I just asked him if we could speak afterwards. After the class, I think he had managed to work through things a bit during our 15 minute sit, and he was more easily able to engage, although still a mask, to some extent. I told him about what had happened, and he suggested a book for me to read — The Buddhist Psychology of Awakening. I thanked him, and he asked me about whether I was going to tell my AT on the course. I told him no, since I didn't think my AT was awakened, and so while what I was saying was true, telling him would neither be useful, nor kind. I reflected that at a certain level I knew that Rob wasn't awakened before he had confirmed it, and I realized I probably hadn't been very kind to Rob either. The call ended somewhat awkwardly.
I spent the rest of the day working, shuttling Nathan around, dealing with household chores, and reading MTCTB in every spare moment, especially regarding the movement through equanimity and to fruition. In the evening, I wrote an email to Rob thanking him for starting me on the path by having me read Search Inside Yourself. I felt strong gratitude towards him, telling him that it may have been the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.
I started sitting around 10:30 and immediately became aware of the field of sensations. I rose into the A&P and started to flow through it like being pulled in a current. I took a deep breath, let it out, and at the same time dropped into dissolution. I sat in dissolution for a while and much more gently this time burned through a few moral issues, the specific content of which I no longer remember, but at the time felt difficult but freeing to churn through. I felt myself distinctly moving through fear, then misery, then disgust, and then seeing it all again at a meta level from re-observation, while coming to terms with it. I found that my concentration had increased dramatically, I could stay in deep concentration indefinitely without moving, it just flowed along -- even parts other than the A&P - and as that steady stream moved, I felt myself rising into equanimity.
From equanimity, I started yearning for fruition again, but wasn’t getting close enough. Consistently, I would feel formations growing and merging, and would realize I was heading towards fruition. But by inclining towards fruition with force, I was creating a concentration object, and moving myself away from insight. As a result, I was weirdly too mindful in the moment -- too aware of what was happening to get swept away in it, which is what has to happen to attain fruition. So I took Daniel's advice. Instead of inclining towards fruition and holding onto it with all my might, while in low equanimity I resolved to attain fruition, and I tried to believe it. When I didn't entirely believe it, I felt the sensations encompassing skepticism and doubt, and all the ripples from that, fears about what not attaining fruition again meant for me on the path, what it meant for my experiential world and capacity for continued growth. I loved being in stream entry, but I knew there was more.
I took all of that and felt it and more all at once, moving past individually noting these mergers but rather just seeing them happening, like strings plucked in my brain, as it merged with the rest of myself as a single formation. I also felt the complete formation of everything "outside" of me. And then I realized that they were all the same sensations, and I let down the barrier between "my" sensations and the "outside" sensations, and felt everything merge into a single whole. Then I saw a face begin to flash up before me, looking back at me, and I recognized it as the description of the no-self door from MTCTB. Of course, upon recognizing that, I immediately fell back. There was a lingering feeling of shock and surprise. I knew I had seen a door -- I just wasn't sure if I had attained a fruition. Was that falling back the moment when my brain reset? It felt like something, but not nearly as powerful as when I attained first path. But this wasn't attaining a path, so maybe it was just weaker now. I wasn't sure, so I resolved to try again.
Weirdly, I felt like I had fallen back much farther than before -- all the way to Mind and Body, or if not that far, at least down to 1st Jhana territory. Sensations were much less distinct, and there wasn't a sensation of peripheral attention at all. I wondered whether I was starting a new complete path of insight. I ultimately decided it didn't matter and went back to practicing. I moved into A&P, and from there sailed gently through the Dark Night and into high equanimity, where I quickly built formations. Without really considering it, I dissolved the barrier between my sensations and outside sensations again, and without any warning, a huge face suddenly stared back at me, initially coming towards me from a non-Euclidean angle but stabilizing right in front of me. It lasted only for a fraction of a second. Although it weirdly felt like a mirror, it was a face I didn't recognize, with light brown hair and a beard. And then that fwoomp feeling happened and my brain rebooted. I was left sitting in the most incredible afterglow -- chill and clear without any hint of self-consciousness. I used the feeling of malleability and flexibility in my brain and resolved to attain further fruitions for the benefit of all beings. I felt it writing itself into my brain. When I got up, bathed in love and calm contentment, I realized that it was 12:45am.
In reflecting on what I had experienced, I had a few insights into my mind and its functioning. The biggest one was how looking back over my life, the progress of insight had been cycling as a fractal, even before I was aware of it. I thought about how similar the progress of insight was to Elliot Wave theory in investing. They clearly both come from an understanding of the human mind and its cycles. The Dark Nights were easy to pick out on the macro scale, and I could see how they each came from the A&P and moved into equanimity. It was an endless cycle. Looking at my recent life, the 2020 crash marked dissolution for me, the unraveling of everything I had assumed and thought was solid, followed relentlessly by fear as I contemplated what I had lost, misery, as I screamed into the pillow at night, disgust as I hated myself with a vengeance, desire for deliverance, then a quieting, before re-observation, when I did it all over again later that year. It was only at the end, when I hit rock bottom and almost died, did I start to turn around and move slowly, carefully, into a more gentle and equanimous place. I think I moved fully into equanimity in Q2 2021. From there, it seems the cycle relentlessly churned, and fractally, from within that larger stage of Equanimity (E1), I started out at Mind and Body, then went on retreat and moved into Cause & Effect and the Three Characteristics. I started to merge slowly into the A&P in December 2021, and then I fully crossed the A&P on January 2nd when I had that realization about discomfort, and moving around and through the discomfort barriers the brain throws up. From there, things accelerated, until I had an A&P event on March 15th that lasted for three weeks. I then took a major tour through the Dark Night as my marriage almost fell apart from the stuff being dredged up, followed by a shift into Equanimity (E2). At a fractal level, I was in high E1, low E2, and now dropping into Mind and Body again (level 3), when I felt like all of my mental abilities had suddenly dried up. I moved from there into A&P (level 3), feeling the extroversion and grandiosity of the stage, and from there into the Dark Night again, when I felt the overwhelming urge to poke at the issues that were still lingering between me and Yiting. Tripping with M moved me very sharply into high E2, and then the following week it started again with mind and body (level 3), when I felt my mental abilities dry up. I started to move slowly into A&P3 territory, when I resolved to trip again alone. It just felt like the right thing to do. From that trip, I moved hard and fast into A&P, down into the Dark Night hardcore, and then up into low then high equanimity, when formations happened without me realizing it, conformity occurred, I saw the door, then attained fruition. I can feel myself now fully lined up in the A&P at all the larger levels, although down below that, I'm cycling constantly, and faster and faster at each lower level. It's all fractals. I worry slightly about what the next E1 and E2 dark nights are going to be like. I'm confident that I will handle them more skillfully going forward, since having this level of awareness allows me to avoid buying too much into the story, but it remains to be seen whether that will be sufficient.
5/24/2022
Continued interesting experiences from awakening. My sense of my own sensations waxes and wanes, but overall they are always still there.
I had an interesting experience regarding marijuana yesterday. I found myself super grumpy in the evening and couldn’t figure out why. Then, the thought arose that I should take marijuana to alleviate the grumpiness. I realized that the marijuana module had infiltrated my consciousness and was making me grumpy specifically to then raise the idea of a solution. Almost as though the marijuana module was sentient.
6/4/2022
Gave up marijuana earlier this week and have been pleased with my meditation since then. Not nearly as strong, but sensations are there and observable, and I feel that I am continuing to make progress. I think I am currently in Equanimity at the largest scales, which helps matters considerably (and makes me excited about my chances for achieving second path.) I'm starting to get a sense of "readiness" about second path, although I think there are still some insights to learn yet. I'm still very easily distracted on the cushion, so am looking very forward to having the retreat, and the opportunity to put aside all distractions.
Discovered Hanjo Youtaku, who is post-4th path. He discusses the idea of opening oneself up to the aid of all positive and higher beings. I pledge to do so, so that I may obtain full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. When he mentioned this, I did something inside of my head, an "opening" that has left me in a (at least for now) persistent altered mind state. Hopefully, I'll understand this better as it unfolds. But I think there is something very real to this. I feel that this may be the key to attaining higher paths for me — seeking aid from outside myself.