[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Vasil,

Just want you to know that what you’re experiencing, although not exactly common, does sometimes occur as a result of meditation practice. I’m saying this to try to help normalize your experience a bit =)

I’ve had lots of intense piti/kundalini type experiences myself as a result of the different practices I’ve done over the years, so I get where you’re coming from.

From what you’ve written in your post, it sounds like some work to “ground and rebalance” things in the energetic department might be helpful. I’d be happy to suggest some safe Qi Gong practices that I’ve found helpful and effective for this kind of thing.

If that’s of interest, we can setup a quick Zoom meeting and I can show you some exercises to try (you can email me at nick (at) 30daysofmindfulness.com.

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Boris,

There’s a couple of things you can try:

1) Use the pleasant sensations (or the sense of pleasantness) as your exclusive object of attention to enter the 1st pleasure jhana, then proceed as usual to the 2nd, 3rd, etc.

2) When in stage 10, take the sense of equanimity as your exclusive object of attention and use it to enter the fourth pleasure jhana (without first going to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd). Then from there, you can downshift to 3rd, 2nd, 1st, or go up to 5th, 6th, etc.

Hope this helps =)

I’ll be on retreat for the next couple of weeks, so will be out of internet range until I get back. Feel free to contact me after Oct 23rd if you need any clarification or assistance with this.

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Andreu,

You’re most welcome. I’m glad you found the tips helpful and that you have a clear direction for your practice =)

Cheers,

Nick

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Stage 5 practice has two main goals:

1) to learn to identify stable subtle dullness and counteract the tendency to slip deeper into it
2) to increase the total conscious power of the mind, or to put it another way, to increase sensitivity without sacrificing (or, ideally, while increasing) the power of awareness

Although piti can temporarily energize things enough to keep subtle dullness at bay, it’s important that you still learn and develop the skills of identifying the presence of subtle dullness and how to overcome it, without relying on the presence of piti.

To that end, I would recommend spending as much time as you need on the first set of practices for Stage 5 described in TMI (the stuff before the body scan is introduced). This includes learning to identify the signs of subtle dullness through checking-in, comparing the quality of attention both during the session and across different sessions, and generally becoming very familiar with the difference between a decrease in detail and vividness of the meditation object that’s due to an increase in subtle distractions or mental agitation vs. when it’s due to subtle dullness.

If the piti is causing a lot of alternation of attention, for example, how does that affect the detail and vividness of the meditation object, and how is that different from the changes in the object that result from subtle dullness? If you like, you can even take the piti temporarily as your meditation object and learn to recognize the signs of the presence of subtle dullness by observing how it affects the quality of the piti itself (this may be easier to do when the piti is more mellow).

I find that when I detect the presence of subtle dullness, simply having the intention to notice greater detail in the object and/or experience it with greater vividness is usually sufficient to counteract the dullness. I recommend you do it this way too, rather than using piti to energize things and keep the subtle dullness at bay. The reason is that you don’t want to rely on the presence of piti to stay sharp and alert during your meditation session – I have had a few students who used piti in this way (and I used to do something similar), who then found themselves struggling with dullness later when the piti subsided and became more mellow =)

During your meditation session, when you feel that there aren’t many subtle distractions, your perception of the meditation object is reasonably detailed and vivid and peripheral awareness seems strong, give the body scan a shot. The body scan should (once you get the hang of it) result in an increase in detail and vividness in the meditation object, but it’s primarily due to an increase in mindfulness rather than a decrease in subtle dullness.

You can think of it like this…Stage 5 has two steps:

Step 1 – decrease subtle dullness via vigilance, which results in an increase in detail and vividness in the meditation object

Step 2 – increase mindfulness via body scanning, which results in a further increase in detail and vividness in the meditation object

That being said, when you’re still getting used to the body scan and putting in a lot of effort to pull it off, that expenditure of energy tends to cause a decrease in subtle dullness as well, but in my experience this is a temporary effect – once the body scan is easy, subtle dullness can return if you haven’t developed the skill of detecting it and counteracting it as learned in Step 1. That’s why we have the two steps in Stage 5, rather than just jumping straight into the body scan.

One other thing – since you’re already sensitive to piti, feel free to use that sensitivity in the body scan. Just look for subtler and subtler manifestations of piti in various parts of the body and try to discern which vary in some way with the breath. When you do this, be careful not to “push” the piti to intensify it in any way. Ultimately, these subtle manifestations of piti, such as tingling, prickly, “vibrationy-like” things are what you’re looking for when body scanning. So, if you can already notice them in a particular body part, there’s no need to start with the grosser physical sensations there (although there’s nothing wrong with doing that if you want to ). The same thing applies when doing the whole body with the breath practice in Stage 6.

Hope that helps to clarify things =)

Cheers,

Nick

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Andreu,

The description you gave of your experience of piti in the early stages is very similar to my own.

One of the things about piti is that it’s very compelling, and so attention is naturally drawn to it. At the same time, bringing attention to the piti tends to increase its intensity, so it’s easy to get into a cycle of ‘piti intensification’ that can result in very wild and agitated meditation sessions. With that in mind, you want to work with piti in a way that avoids this cycle of intensification (unless you have very specific reasons for intensifying the piti).

Here are a few things you may wish to try that I found to be helpful:

1) Try your best to let go of any resistance to, or struggle against, the piti. See if you can treat the piti as just another sensation, even though it can seem somewhat strange and intense. Being equanimous with the presence of piti, just as with any other insistent distraction, can go a long way towards letting it ‘sink into the background’ so that you can have more continuity of attention on the meditation object. The equanimity will also help take some of the ‘energy’ and intensity out of the restlessness that can accompany strong piti.

2) I found my attention very strongly alternated with the piti sensations in the face, and at times it seemed impossible to keep attention from doing this. If you notice something similar happening, it’s ok. Until you get to stage 6, this kind of alternation is fine – it doesn’t mean that you’re back in Stage 3. To take the ‘pressure’ off needing to isolate your meditation object in a sea of intense piti, you can even allow the sensations of facial piti to be incorporated into your meditation object, so that your object is a combination of piti and breath sensations at the nose. I’ve found that this kind of ‘hybrid’ object allowed me to stop fussing with the fact that the piti kept capturing my attention, and made it easier to be equanimous with the whole thing. This, in turn, improved the continuity of my attention. Doing this also didn’t seem to intensify the piti, perhaps because the breath sensations were still part of the meditation object (i.e. piti was not the sole object of attention)

3) When it comes time to be more discriminating with your meditation object, such as in Stage 6 and higher, especially if you are doing close following, it helps to take a more metacognitive perspective (in fact, doing this can be beneficial earlier than Stage 6 if you have enough metacognitive introspective awareness to do it). Everything arising in conscious experience, including the piti, is part of this vast field of conscious awareness. Allow it all to unfold before you, almost as if the field of conscious awareness was this large TV screen in front of you on which everything plays out (don’t actually visualize a screen or anything, this is just a metaphor to help you get into a more metacognitive perspective). The function of attention is to highlight particular portions of this field. You can think of it like the tuner dial on a radio. As you turn the dial, different frequencies are emphasized and others fade out. It’s very similar with attention in the field of conscious awareness. Turn the knob on your attention dial until your attention is tuned to the meditation object such that everything else is allowed to fade into the background. By doing this, you aren’t doing anything to suppress anything else in the field of conscious awareness (including the piti), you are merely choosing what you wish to tune into (the meditation object).

Basically, when working with strong piti, regardless of what stage it arises in, the name of the game is to get to a place where the piti sensations are just sensations, and no more or less important that any other. The less you make a ‘story’ out of the piti, the less its sometimes intense and chaotic nature will interfere with the continuity of attention.

Also, be aware of any tendency to ‘indulge’ in the piti. Intense, chaotic piti can have quite an allure and make it feel like you’re a pretty amazing meditator (don’t ask me how I know this 😉 ), so take care to not be doing anything to intensify it to have a really cool and exciting experience. BTW, I’m not saying that you’re doing this, but it’s something to watch for because I’ve done it in the past and I’ve had students indulge in it too =)

As you pointed out, as the mind gets calmer, the piti tends to increase. That’s perfectly fine (and expected) and so just do your best to take that in stride. Eventually, the piti matures into a beautiful meditative joy, so this rocky period is very much a temporary thing =)

Hope that helps!

Cheers,

Nick (DT Teacher in Training)

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by  Nick Grabovac.

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Olov,

I can take a stab at answering your questions based on my experience with having done a lot of Daniel Ingram-inspired Mahasi-style dry insight practice prior to becoming a student of Culadasa =)

I attained the first two paths (confirmed by both Ingram and Culadasa) using Ingram’s approach.

After 2nd path, I’ve been pretty much exclusively practicing according to Culadasa’s 10-stage samatha-vipassana approach (about the last 4-5 years).

Personally, I think both dry insight and samatha-vipassana are fantastic. That being said, I prefer samatha-vipassana because:

1) it’s much more enjoyable than dry-insight
2) no dark night (but purifications of mind and manifestations of piti can be pretty intense)
3) having effortlessly stable attention makes it possible to effectively engage in many other forms of meditation that I was unable to do well before, including jhana practice, metta practice, etc, which is wonderful
4) insights are much more powerful and profound, and seem to sink in much deeper

#4 is probably the main reason I’ve made the switch.

So, with that pre-able, here’s my attempt at answering your questions:

1. No need to wait for the first cessation event, but no harm in trying for stream entry either. Since you think you might be close to first path, you may want to consider practicing both forms of meditation to really ‘crank things up’ and see if you can attain stream entry. As you mentioned, samatha practice does seem to become significantly easier after stream entry.

2. Lots of additional transformation occurs during the review period following the attainment of path. In fact, this is the whole point of the review period! Having a unified mind certainly helps the insights “sink in” deeper, but so does lots and lots of repetition. And, not just spontaneous review, but also intentional, careful, systematic review (especially “re-experiencing” the fruition event). In fact, I would say that having both unification and lots of repetition is even better 😉

3. I haven’t specifically asked Culadasa for his take on review cycles, so I’m not sure what he’d say. From my perspective, the review period was very important and was how I consolidated the effects of the insights gained through the 16 stages and first two paths. You need this integration time to really help these insights sink in and alter your current way of relating to your experience. I’ve experienced the review cycles while practicing samatha-vipassana (Culadasa’s 10-stage system) and they occurred pretty much the same way as when I experienced them while doing dry insight. The only difference is that your perspective is different. Rather than experiencing A&P, dark night, equanimity and fruition, I experienced spontaneous movement through Stages 6 through 9 of Culadasa’s system and fruition. The correspondences between the two systems are definitely there, but the flavour is very different.

4. Great question! I’d like to know that too! My (current) understanding, based on what I’ve experienced so far as well as discussions with Culadasa is as follows (to be taken with several heaping teaspoons of salt!):

The insights and path attainments basically provide access to new ways of perceiving and relating to your experience. They show you how flawed your current mental model of reality is and give you the knowledge you need to update your mental model to make it more accurate.

But, the path attainments alone are not sufficient to completely rewire your habitual tendencies. I say “completely”, because a lot of habitual ‘junk’ does seem to get cleared out after a path attainment, but there’s still a lot of habitual stuff left.

Now that you have access to a different way of relating to your experience (because of the insights and path attainments), the job is now to integrate that new knowledge by retraining those habitual tendencies.

So, you train yourself through the repeated holding of intentions and positive reinforcement to essentially perceive all of experience as empty mental formations. Over time, this becomes your habitual mode of perception, and so you relate to your experience with greater and greater equanimity and compassion.

Thus, “full awakening” requires the path attainments, and is an ongoing process of retraining the mind until equanimity and compassion become your default, habitual modes of relating.

Again, this is just my current understanding and could be totally wrong!

Hope that helps =)

Cheers,

Nick

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Joey,

From your description of what you notice during your practice, it does sound like Stage 7/8. Here’s a little experiment you can do to help confirm that for yourself:

Start meditating, and after you’ve “settled in” to the practice, have the intention for attention to remain on the sensations of the breath at the nostrils. Observe what happens. If your primary meditation object isn’t breath sensations at the nose, then it may take a few moments for attention to stabilize there, which is no problem.

If you are at Stage 7 or higher, the attention should rest effortlessly where you’ve intended it to, without you needing to do anything to keep it there. After a few minutes of this, have the intention for attention to move to a different location, such as the sensations in your right hand. Again, observe what happens.

After a few minutes, have the intention for attention to encompass all physical sensations related to the breath that are located in the mid-line area of the body: roughly the area extending from the forehead to the nose, down the neck, down the chest to the abdomen. Allow all other sensations and those located elsewhere in the body to remain in peripheral awareness. Observe what happens.

Finally, after a few minutes, have the intention for attention to rest on the sensations in your left big toe. Observe what happens.

The idea is to evaluate how easily you can select and sustain a chosen object for attention, and how easily you can select and sustain a narrow vs. broad scope of attention. In either case, all sensations outside of the chosen attentional scope should remain in peripheral awareness.

If you’re in Stage 7/8, you should be able to do this exercise without straining, or needing to make attention do these things through an effort of will. You should be able to simply intend for attention to do what you wish, and it happens. And the attention should stay put until you decide to move it somewhere else =)

The daily life manifestations you mention are very familiar to me, as are periods of insomnia due to the intensity of energy/piti.

I found that the still point meditation (see p. 318) to be really helpful, especially when the piti was so strong it caused me to bounce out of my chair or off my cushion =). It allows the intense piti to “do it’s thing” and “work itself out” while you remain in a space of stillness and centeredness. It can feel a bit like sitting in the eye of a hurricane =)

Another thing that helped a lot was to consciously surrender, as much as I could, to the process that was unfolding, and bring equanimity to my experience. Do this both during meditation and during daily life. I often found that intense feelings of pressure were an indication that I was resisting some aspect of the experience (a manifestation of craving) and that letting go of that resistance would allow the energy to flow more easily, reducing the pressure.

Something else that I found essential at this stage was to really bring metacognitive awareness to my daily life, in a much deeper way. See everything as process. Seeing objects becomes “the process of seeing”, hearing sounds becomes “the process of hearing”, feeling sensations becomes “the process of feeling”, etc. Whenever you remember, hold the intention to experience everything through a “metacognitive perspective” and watch the flow of conscious experience. I found much joy in experiencing life through this perspective.

As you continue to practice, the piti is going to do it’s thing, and it may feel pretty intense at times, but that’s ok. It means the mind is unifying, which is great news! Just do your best to surrender to that process, remain equanimous, allow the piti to stay in awareness and do whatever your practice stage requires at that moment. Eventually, things will calm down =)

Please keep us posted as to how it’s going.

Cheers,

Nick

P.S. For pleasure jhana practice, be careful to maintain peripheral awareness so that you don’t get lost in thought or slip into dullness. When the jhana clicks, it will pull your attention into the object “by itself”, you don’t need to do anything to make it happen, other than sustain your attention on the pleasantness of the sensation. Leigh Brasington wrote an excellent book on the pleasure jhana practice called “Right Concentration”. You may find it a helpful companion to the instructions in The Mind Illuminated.

P.P.S. Yes, I still note in meditation and daily life, in the sense that the Mahasi noting practice and the 10 Stage samatha-vipassana method have kind of “merged together” for me. None of the noting is using mental labels – it’s a “clear knowing” of moment by moment experience that occurs in a larger metacognitive awareness of everything being a process (that’s on a good day 😉 ). When I do the choiceless attention practice (p. 306) it’s like Mahasi noting on steroids!

[Nick GrabovacMember]

Hi Joey,

Welcome to the Dharma Treasure Community Forum.

I’ll do my best to answer your questions based on my experience with both Mahasi-style noting practice and Culadasa’s 10 Stage samatha/vipassana system.

Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of both methods =)

I started out with noting practice and found it to be very effective, but after a while I stalled in my practice and didn’t know how to progress further using that system. I then switched to samatha/vipassana, which has been of tremendous help, and feel that this was the “missing piece of the puzzle” for me. I’m not suggesting that noting practice is somehow incomplete, just that the combination of the two worked well for me.

Before I get into your question about the dark night, I think it’s important to mention a few things about determining levels of attainment in the 10 Stage system.

The physical sensations you describe, such as vibrations, pressure, etc do sound like manifestations of piti. Unlike with the noting technique, however, where you can pretty accurately (most of the time) gauge your progress by the careful examination of how physical sensations present (including piti), I’ve found it isn’t as reliable an indicator when working with Culadasa’s 10 Stage approach. For example, I found that, after crossing the Arising and Passing Away using the noting technique, the sensations associated with piti were more or less always present, even when I wasn’t meditating. For that reason, these sensations weren’t all that helpful for figuring out what Stage of samatha/vipassana I was in.

I’ve found that a much more accurate gauge of one’s progress in samatha/vipassana are the criteria for mastery given for each of the stages. In this case, if you are in Stage 7, then your practice should more or less correspond to the description given in the conclusion of the chapter “Stage Six” (see p. 233): subtle distractions are subdued through continuous vigilance, you can sustain a high level of metacognitive awareness, the meditation object is perceived clearly and vividly, you have complete control over the scope of attention, etc. Any manifestations of piti that you regularly experience can serve as additional support for your hypothesis, but I would caution against using them as your main criteria.

This isn’t to cast doubt on your attainments, but rather to highlight some of the differences in the two systems to help you more accurately track your progress. These differences tripped me up for a while after I made the switch from noting practice to samatha/vipassana, so hopefully mentioning them here will spare you from making some of the same mistakes in ‘diagnosis’ that I initially did =)

With respect to the correspondence between the 16 knowledges of insight and the 10 stages, here’s how I experience them:

– Late A&P (where noting is fast, precise, penetrating and effortless) = Stage 7 (effortlessly sustained exclusive attention and powerful mindfulness)

– Dark Night (especially Re-Observation) = Stage 8 (intense and sometimes quite uncomfortable manifestations of piti)

– Equanimity = Stage 9 (piti subsides and is replaced by a profound tranquility and equanimity)

Although the latter part of the A&P does seem to correspond with Stage 7 (since both have a marked effortlessness of attentional stability), the attentional stability achieved in the A&P via noting practice isn’t as developed as that achieved through samatha/vipassana. The difference being that the stability of attention gained via noting is much less robust than that achieved using the 10 Stage approach. So, although the correspondence between the systems is real, there is a substantial difference in the command of attention developed through these two approaches. Another way of saying this is that you may experience similar phenomena using the two systems, but that doesn’t imply that you have developed the same skills.

Ok, on to your question =)

Ted already mentioned a bunch of great resources in “The Mind Illuminated” and you should definitely check those out.

I’ll dive into a little more detail about what’s going on in the 10 Stages and how that relates to the dark night experience, which will hopefully help you better understand the differences between the two approaches so you can make an informed choice about how to proceed.

In a nutshell, as Ted mentioned in his post, the ability to develop joy, tranquility and equanimity, and not experience the Dark Night has to do with how much insight you have into no-self, and how much you can genuinely accept and surrender to your present moment experience.

Actually, my sense is that it’s not really correct to say “and not experience the Dark Night”.

Even if you’re practicing the 10 Stages, when you reach Stage 8 you may very well experience very similar intense physical sensations that you experienced in the Dark Night. This is what happened to me.

The big difference, however, is that samatha/vipassana is a completely different paradigm of practice, compared with noting: you experience things through the lens of pleasure, joy and no-self. I also found that the psychological component that was sometimes present in the dukkha nanas was absent in Stage 8 (and, in fact, discursive thought was pretty much absent as well, so that makes sense).

I think there’s a tendency to characterize the dukkha nanas as being all about challenging physical, and especially psychological, experiences. But I think that obscures what they’re really about.

From my experience, the meditator’s task in the dukkha nanas is to come to a place of genuine acceptance of their present moment experience, no matter how uncomfortable or unwanted it might be. To fully surrender to and embrace all the discordant, difficult physical sensations and to bring a real curiosity and openness to any mental imagery or emotional states that arise. After all, these are the knowledges of suffering. They show you that it’s your own craving for things to be different than they are that is the cause of your suffering. Without that craving, the Dark Night comes and goes, just like anything else =), and you can then realize the empty nature of formations (which is what allows you to experience the knowledge of equanimity towards formations).

Similarly, in Stage 8, the meditator needs to fully surrender to allow unification of mind to occur, despite the intensity of the piti that may be arising.

From my perspective, the dukkha nanas and Stage 8 are offering the same “lessons”.

just as a meditator can get “stuck” in the dark night, if they identify with the psychological content that arises and enact aversion towards it and their physical discomfort, a meditator can also get “stuck” in Stage 8 by not being able to let go of the need to be in control, or by getting attached to the intense pleasure that can arise during that stage.

Both the dukkha nanas and Stage 8 are pointing at the same need for acceptance, surrender and non-craving.

That being said, I’ve found that this kind of non-attachment is much easier to pull off within a context of pleasure, joy and a highly attenuated sense of self, which is what you develop when using the 10 Stage approach that Culadasa teaches.

This happens for several reasons:

1) A lot of psychological stuff was dealt with during the purification of mind that occurred during Stage 4 and Stage 7. So, it doesn’t tend to surface in Stage 8 in the way that it can during the Dark Night

2) By Stage 8, you’ve had insight into no-self. It’s just so obvious by then that you can’t avoid it =). This helps to counterbalance the (sometimes ridiculously) intense piti

3) As I already mentioned, samatha/vipassana operates from a completely different paradigm than the noting technique. In the noting technique, we are taught to vigorously dissect and ‘penetrate’ every sensation and mental object that arises, including manifestations of joy and pleasure. The idea is to see them all as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self. I remember that when I was practicing the noting technique, impermanence was, by far, the easiest of the three characteristics to notice. I would occasionally get glimpses into no-self, but I didn’t really get much insight into that until I had reached the knowledge of equanimity. The result was that I was really good at seeing everything as impermanent, and therefore unsatisfactory. When this kind of intense deconstruction of momentary experience is brought to the sensations and mental activities that make up one’s sense of self, the result can be very disturbing for some people, especially if they have also deconstructed any joy or pleasure that arises during their practice, and even more so if they have not yet had sufficient insight into no-self. Culadasa’s 10 Stage System seems to work the other way around: you get a much deeper insight into no-self before you really get into a deep investigation of impermanence and unsatisfactoriness. What I noticed with this approach is that, by Stage 6, because of the broad context provided by metacognitive introspective awareness, there is a significant attenuation of a sense of being a separate self. Then Stage 7 brings a wondrous effortlessness of attentional stability, which further underscores the lack of a “self that is the one who is paying attention”. Add to that the arising of pleasure and joy and the experience is one of “happily letting go of the self” and surrender =). Experiencing the emptiness of the self just feels so good that, even when moments of fear or discomfort arise, they seem relatively easy to not attach to.

So, although you may well experience similar physical “symptoms” to the dark night while practicing samatha/vipassana, the overall experience tends to have a very different character, and (at least in my experience) lacks the heavy psychological component.

I also found practicing the pleasure jhanas to really help me to recognize, develop and understand joy and tranquility, so I second Josh’s suggestion to give that practice a try. One of the ways that I found jhana practice really helpful was to accelerate Stage 7: once you have attained Stage 6 and you can “let go of control” for brief periods without losing attentional stability, you can enter the pleasure jhanas for a while. Then, after the jhana is really stable (I usually went first jhana, then second jhana), you can exit the jhana and you’ll find that your unification of mind is noticeably stronger.

You’ve clearly made a great deal of progress with the Mahasi noting technique, to the point of attaining knowledge of equanimity, so I imagine it’s quite a big decision to switch to a different meditation method, especially when you’ve gotten so close to Stream Entry. After connecting with the Dharma Overground community and Daniel Ingram, I’m sure you now have a much better understanding of the stages of insight, and the dark night in particular. Hopefully, Ted’s reply and this post have helped you understand some of the related aspects of Culadasa’s 10 Stage system and have given you some ideas on how to move forward in your practice. =)

Cheers,

Nick

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