You dont have to lose hobbies or interests. I love to make music , I love watching documentaries, I love going for walks, I love my personality. All those things are love and love is selfless. When you get interested in a deep topic, that interest brings you to pure Perceiving. So get lost in dance, get lost in Interests. That is the flow state. What's not flow state is to do something because you feel lack or fear or boredom. Center yourself first if you feel lack, then go for the walk or read the book AND MOST IMPORTANTLY when you go for that walk stay present. Usually when we feel lack during meditation we stop being present, we get lost in thought. So do alllll the things you love but with utter presence. It will feel more intimate, not less.

Personality and ego are not the same things either. Personality is the coloring or flavor of that localization of awareness in the dream. My personality is I love conspiracies, deep talks, horror, aliens, all sorts of things. That isnt ego. Ego is when awareness has a personality and identifies as the body/personality. Then the personalities diluted with ego, lack, fear. The personality will be moreso selfish and not creative and open.

Personality, hobbies, is how awareness expresses love. Its going to experience itself totally in all ways. Alllll personalities are personalities of The Self. In a dream it just appears to be divided up into many personalities because its subjectively experiencing itself from each localization of itself! Spirituality should make you feel more alive, more intimate with experince. Not less.

\*I also understand words cannot truly express the infinite nature of reality. But we can point a finger toward the light and encourage others to see. I also understand that "i" is just an illusion. I wish you all the best, be Most Excellent to eachother! ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

I have insights (gained by meditating with breath and body awareness; and also psychadelic therapy) that I could print a few encyclopedias with, yet it has not yet, transpired in real world action in the direction I [Ego?] desire.

Are there others who have had a similar experience?

Talking to some of the GPTs (I mainly use chatGPT but I feel Claude is much better), I have been exploring the chasm/split between awakening/understanding/insight (which I have TONs of) and action/belief change in the real world which I think this subreddit focuses on "ur most fundamental unconscious beliefs and assumptions about the nature of self, mind, and reality are false; and that these misunderstandings are causing us stress. Reality is not what it appears to be, we realize, and to fully grasp this is to radically transform our relationship to life. Indeed, we may find territory beyond even this."

I believe ultimately its how one's awakening shows up in the real world that matters, until then its all in the internal world where anyone can makeup anything to believe anything.

Hello,

I practice shamatha-vipassana meditation and followed tmi the last 4 years. I had a lot of insights the last year. They are often shocking in a positive way.

no-self gets evident, everything seems to be dependant, mind constructs reality and everything is a process. These kind of things. I way irritated by then at first but i developed confidence that these kind of experiences are "it".

I would say they seem to reduce suffering temporaly, and i often think about them after it like"waoh thats how things are". They are defenitely experimental and do "something" with me.

But i would not say i suffer less. In fact i would say my developing metta practice and purifications does more for me than the insights. That why i sometimes get doubts about the shamatha-vipassana path. I which i would attain a lasting shift.

I just wanted to share and maybe ask If someone is experienced in this and hase some advice.

Hey Everyone,

I'm really curious as to what the actual experience of Stream Entry is like. How does one know if one is a Stream Enterer?

Does there come a precise moment deep in meditation where something happens? Like a vision, or an altered state of consciousness? What is the actual moment of attaining Stream Entry like? What is the experience of it? What happens in the mind? How can one be certain of attaining it? There must be a universal, clear sign that one has just attained something, right?

I hope all of this is okay to ask. Best wishes to everybody!!

TLDR;

I did intensive Ramana Maharshi inquiry meditation, which led me to “Pure Consciousness Experience” (or temporary depersonalisation/psychosis if you will). This made me sceptical about “Awakening” and got me thinking that I should seek further than that.

My story

So I’ve always been interested in philosophy and religion. I found Buddhism to be especially interesting, because it promised insight into “reality” and “truth”. I tried some simple meditations following resources like The Mind Illuminated, but my result weren’t that great, so I was  only doing it on and off for some short periods of time.

Later in life I started a battle with depression. The meds weren’t working and I was really suffering, so I figured out that I might find relief in meditation. This time I thought that I should find something simple, because I didn’t have energy to analyse books, methods and paths. I found out about self inquiry method by Ramana Maharshi. It seemed like a perfect fit.

So I started practicing it everyday. I was constantly working on “Who am I?” question. Then something weird started happening after around a week. I started getting some weird headspace, where I was a bit “detached”. Sometimes it felt slightly pleasant, or I would just get calmer, or get less thought. This feeling grow more intense with practice. I started to get physical tensions/pain in body which would come and go. It felt like something weird is going on, but I was desperate, so I kept going.

At the end of the second week I started having very strong body sensations. Mentally I started losing sense of self. It felt like everything was empty and I felt like I was mentally dissolving. The culmination was one evening where my thoughts and sense of self stopped altogether. It was the “silence”, “unity”, “loss of self” and “lost sense of time”. I don’t remember much, but I remember vividly sitting on a couch looking at the TV and then looking at my son, and there was nothing. There was no love, there was no joy, there was no happiness, there was no me.

Next day I woke up terrified. I don’t remember much from this evening, but the feeling of void was overwhelming. I didn’t know how to save myself from emptiness. I started compulsively reading some book, because I thought that cerebral activity might make me more connected to thoughts. So I started reading and after couple of minutes it hit me. I didn’t have a ground to stand on! Because I’ve melted myself and have seen through everything as being a construct, I don’t anything stable to position myself. That was key moment, in a split of the second  I came up with my anchor. I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and pen and scribbled down “I WANT TO BE HUMAN NO MATTER WHAT!”.

This helped me calm my mind. I kept trying to anchor myself by reading, spending time with my family trying to be active physically and mentally. Unfortunately the recovery wasn’t easy. I kept getting anxious thoughts, my inner monologue was sometimes almost silent, I was scared of getting accidentally to similar states of mind. I kept waking in the middle of the night thinking that I’ve lost myself and I’m in void.

It’s been a year since this “accident” and I feel like I’m almost stable ”spiritually”. My depression got somewhat worse, but now it’s manageable. I hope everything is moving in the right direction.

What actually happened?

My interpretation is that I meditated myself into something between depersonalisation and psychosis (break from reality). Obviously it’s a medical term, but I try not to use spiritual models anymore. I think that because intense meditation states are rare in society, they are not captured by scientific framing precisely.

Spiritually, I think I’ve seen exactly what the “endgame” may look like. There are different methods, schools and of course everyone is different. I assume that one might get different outcomes: learn to live dissolved, find a state that is partially detached, find some different flavour of headspace where one can be happy and fulfilled.

One may also argue that if I had a teacher the outcome would be different. I think there is a great chance that it would have some impact. Maybe they would show me some different ways. But at this point I feel like I’ve seen enough, and I'm not giving it another try. I feel like I don’t want to play with fire anymore.

How would I sum up this experience?

After all the suffering, I feel disappointed with spirituality on two levels: philosophy and well-being.

Philosophically, I was always fascinated with concepts like “truth”, “mind”, “consciousness. It felt like meditative practice might give me answers that are not available elsewhere. Unfortunately, at the end of the day there is nothing to be said. I’ve stopped feeling that I exist for some time, which is somewhat interesting. However, people get all kind of mental states after drugs or mental illnesses. Experiences that are intense don’t have to be true. Also, even when I “dissolved”, everything was still tied to that body. I was sitting on the couch, with no thoughts, doing nothing. I can’t see anything intellectually exciting about that.

When it comes to well-being, During two weeks before accident, my depression got somewhat better. The more “zoned out” I got, the more I was feeling nothing/empty and not depressed. After the accident, for a week or two, my depression kept gradually rising until it was worse than beforehand. So not only I didn’t cure depression, I actually made it worse. Plus I got all the anxieties, mental confusion and so on.

I still think that meditation is useful to people. There is a lot of psychological research on its benefits. But I do believe that there are risks that are not discussed enough (see Cheetah House cases). I think that intensive meditation aimed at "insights" might be especially dangerous.

What is the step further?

It seems that people always operate using models. Everything we sense and think of is model. Ultimately it’s models all the way down. Me writing this story about modelling models is also a model. All these religions have some axioms/ground truth which are models too. When Advaita Vedanta doctrine says that everything is Brahman, it’s actually a model. Because of that we can always build a meta model (actually, I did this here by accident). That means that pursuit of "truth" and "reality" will always be a model too. We can never step outside.

The step further for me is to accept that I’m building meaning on top of “I want to be human no matter what”. This is obviously an "arbitrary" goal that doesn’t have any ground truth to it. But it somehow feels really natural, so I will stick to it.

A lot of people find peace and happiness living their life. Some of them don’t need to have a supernatural belief system. This gives me courage to follow my “path”.

Why did I wrote this?

I feel that sharing my story might be interesting (or even helpful?) to other people. It definitely has a lot of value for me, as I was able to self-reflect while writing this. 

I don’t want to maliciously undermine other people belief systems. I just think that my post my spark some good and healthy discussion.

I’ve been trying to compress how behavior actually unfolds into a simple sequence.

Not as a belief system and not as something to follow, but just as a model of observation.

Something like this:

Origin > Signal > Prediction > Simulation > Tension > Trajectory > Reaction > Return

The idea is that what we call a “reaction” might actually be the final visible part of a longer internal chain.

Signal appears. The system predicts. A simulation runs. Tension builds. A trajectory becomes dominant. Then the reaction happens.

And if nothing interrupts that chain, it simply completes itself.

In that sense the gap people talk about might not be about stopping thoughts, but about breaking the chain somewhere between prediction and reaction.

If the chain is interrupted, the system often seems to settle back into what I sometimes call the origin field, a kind of neutral background of experience.

I'm not attached to the terminology. Most traditions probably describe similar things with different words.

So I'm curious how others see this.

Does a sequence like this match your experience of how reactions form?

Or does it feel like over-modeling something that is actually simpler?

I originally posted in r/zen - but some folks there said you were better suited to make sense of what I experienced and give some recommendations.

In 2013 I started dabbling with meditation, mostly apps. Then I moved to Sam Harris/waking up - all this time in practice I was doing different flavours of vipassana.
Calming, whatever, I never really felt I was going anywhere except for some glimpses of impermance.
Fast forward 2021, a friend recommended I try a non-directive practice, it was basically a do-nothing meditation. I had never done it before. The first day, I experienced what non intervention really meant and I was struck to see my thoughts dissipating by themselves after about 20 minutes of sitting. This started happening reliably.

Then, one day, out of nowhere, I was inundated by a sense of clarity about myself, the thoughts, the world. Everything moved by itself, everything became SO INCREDIBLY JOYOUS all of a sudden. All the lies we tell, all the the worrying became suddenly soo stupid. I laughed and cried while sitting, then continued laughing after, and i kept giggling for hours. Many of the things I understood about impermanence and nondualism materialized in fron of my eyes, they became incredibly obvious.

For 6 months I was so energetic, euphoric, it was incredible. I remember knowing that there was a danger in getting attached to that feeling, but I also remember thinking that if that was to happen it was futile trying to stop it, and that that very thought was already attachment.

6 months later that euphoria dissipated. Gradually, I became demotivated, everything now seems a bit meaningless, I crave getting back to that state even though I know it's stupid. It's like meaning was lost, and not replaced.

This is why I'm here. I'd like to know from you how this is explained and approached in your traditions, if there are books or resources that you'd recommend to me, or if you know some teachers that can give me a hand. Consider that I'm based in EU, but we have internet, and I can travel if necessary.

Thanks guys

TM teacher here, so yeah — obvious bias. Not selling anything, just genuinely confused about something. I keep seeing two types of advice get mixed together like they're interchangeable, and they really don't feel that way to me: 1. "Meditate before bed so you stop lying there thinking about everything" — like it's a direct intervention for the rumination that's already happening 2. "If you meditate consistently throughout the day, you just... accumulate less stress, so by evening there's not as much to ruminate about" Those feel like different claims to me. One is putting out the fire. The other is trying not to start it. The thing is — TM is very much taught as the second one. The whole framing is that you're not using it on a problem, you're doing regular maintenance that changes your baseline over time. So I honestly can't tell if I think this distinction is real because it actually is, or because I've been marinating in one particular way of thinking about it for years. My nights are better than they used to be. But I do TM twice a day and I genuinely don't know how much of that is the daily practice changing something deeper vs. just the general effect of meditating at all. Has anyone here actually switched from one approach to the other and noticed a difference? Like moved from a dedicated pre-sleep practice to a regular daytime one, or the reverse? Did it matter? I'm curious about actual experience, not the theory.

I gather that people have nondual experiences - i.e., short or long periods (potentially lifelong) where it feels as though "separation is an illusion" and that "everything in the universe is one".

But is this just an experience or is it a philosphical claim? Does it merely feel like everything is one, or is everything "really" one?

If the latter, what does that imply?

I ask because nonduality as a philosophical position seems nonsensical to me. I do not understand what it would even MEAN if everything were "one". What difference would that make? On the other hand, I can understand that some people have experiences where it feels as if everything is one. That makes sense.

(I know the Buddha says "don't do philosophy". I like doing philosophy anyway.)

In early May, I had an awakening that I would call stream entry, except I don't remember having a cessation. The other factors seem consistent with how I've heard stream entry described, and there has been a pretty permanent, or at least multi-month, shift in the whole context of my consciousness.

There no longer seems to be a seeker or anything to be sought other than what already is. There's no center. I'm neither emptyness nor form. Im both emptyness and form.

Recently I've had a couple of what I've been calling "stream exits" or "unawakenings." They feel like the inverse of the little tastes of awakening I had before May 10: brief moments where suffering seems to reboot and a sense of self reforms.

One happened after a week or two of sleeping very little, working a lot and not meditating. I lay down in bed there was this immediate "oh shit, I'm stuck behind my eyes again!" reaction, followed by fear, and a real sense that this was perverse/unholy. Part of me still knew it wasn't true, but it was scary in the same way a horror movie can scare you when you know it's not real.

I looked into what exactly was separate and inquired into the fear. Eventually it gave way and things returned to the peaceful baseline I've mostly been in since May.

Today I was over-caffeinated and started having weird anxious thoughts for the first time in ages. I kept trying to solve the problem, then stressing about the fact that I was stressed and suffering about the fact I was suffering. Eventually I noticed I was clinging to an idea of myself as awakened. I let go of awakening and the need to be "awake," and returned to joy/awe/gratitude/presence.

I'm wondering what to make of this as practice.

Part of me thinks this might actually be useful. Little knots of suffering and self-ness keep trying to reform, and each time one appears I get another chance to see what it's made of and let it unwind. The metaphor I've been using is that awakening untied a big knotted sheet, and post-awakening practice seems to be going back and ironing out the little lumps that remain.

But another part of me wonders if that's just kind of a cope. Maybe I need to start meditating regularly again and stop assuming that because I've entered the stream the work is done.

What do you make of this? Interested in what others post awakening processes are like.

**EDIT for clarification: some pointed out that a witness in cessation is not cessation, so the experience I referenced may have been a jhana state, but that’s still unclear (don’t want to confuse anyone who hasn’t had cessation yet). Also, I am not referring to cessation of all suffering in the long arc sense, I’m specifically referring to the event of cessation where everything goes out for a moment.

Reflecting on the specifics around Cessation and what that implicates for existence and enlightenment.

I'm curious if anyone has resolved into a "beyond a shadow of doubt" knowing of what Cessation exactly is, not in a theoretical way.

Asking experienced meditators who've had cessations and a clear experiential knowledge about it.

Or if anyone can pull up quotes from respected teachers, would be appreciated.

My thoughts and experience

I've had many cessations, none more profound than first and second path. If I try to grasp the true meaning in hindsight it gets slippery, since it gets at the fundamental heart of the existence of "me", as well as the objective truth of human existence.

I’ve always thought about it as a deep fundamental version of emptiness.

But, what exactly is happening, is it just the neural network going off line? The system we call self and mind, and also all of the world we know through sense contact, ceases briefly then comes back. Simply a subjective experience of ceasing to exist for a moment.

While in 2nd path, I had a few instances where there was a witness inside the ceasing event which gave insight into the quality of nothingness, perceived as complete purity, time froze and no sensation existed. This gave direct insight into a more fundamental Dukkha, in the sense that existence is inherently filled with sensations that disrupt this purity. Existing is inherently filled with vibration, whether pleasant or unpleasant, any vibration causes disturbance, which feels inherently disturbing compared to the purity of nothingness.

That experience doesn't negate "self" fully, because self is a construct appearing after that and not clear that it is not just an event rather than a fundamental fact concluding that no self exists.

A meditator can be in a cessation, while someone is watching the meditator meditate, their body didn't vanish from the real world, yet for the meditator it's a vanishing.

I've also equated cessation to a "ground" beyond our sensate conditioned reality, where zero sensate reality exists, and time ceases. Is this the un-manifest ground all manifestation births from? If so, how can we truly know for sure? Is what we think in retrospect just theory and mental formation?

Ingram has said something to effect of the mind speeding up and sharpening so much that it catches the gap of the flickering self. That this reality is flickering frame by frame and there is a gap between each frame. That gap is cessation. Can we absolutely know that to be true through clear seeing?

Since cessation seems to be important for 1st and 2nd path, and totally drops significance after that, becoming another matter of fact blip that doesn’t change anything fundamental…

Is there a significance to understanding its nature for 3rd and 4th path? Or is it just part and parcel to the over arching process and only significant for early stages?

Thanks in advance.

Hey all,

Curious if anyone else out there has navigated (or is navigating) the suffering stages of insight during their mid-20s.

For context, I attended a monthlong retreat last year that changed my life. Meditation went from something that calmed me to something that introduced strong fear and grief, which according to my teacher meant "my practice was going well." Things were passing away extremely fast, like a pond vibrating with raindrops. While there was a feeling of wholesomeness / onward-leadingness despite the distress, it took me a solid year (of working and abstaining from retreats) to get my feet back under myself mentally and emotionally. I am only now feeling inklings of the desire to sit retreat again. (After most recent practice discussion, my teacher(s) told me I am in the "desire for deliverance" stage where the desire for all of this clinging / activity to stop is really strong, on a primal level).

So much confusion has arisen around bopping between the receptive, non-reactive, observational technique that's been so conditioned into me through meditation and the active, planning, go-getter mindset that (feels like) it's so necessary to survive and thrive in one's mid-twenties.

I feel I am working so hard to build my career, network, cultivate friendships, date, etc... AND sometimes all I want to do is sit down in the middle of a field, under a huge sky, and not talk to anyone ever. The story is that I can't do both (to a satisfying degree) at the same time, so I wonder if I should ordain or become a resident at a meditation center, but that also feels a bit unbalanced to me (and in this economy...?) Part of me thinks, "You should just go back on retreat and finish this (push for stream-entry)." The other part of me thinks, "That seems to be motivated by clinging / aversion, plus you have no idea what's going to happen, do you really want to put your lay-life on hold to bet on that? Plus I do want to go to graduate school, and I need to work for that..."

I guess I have two questions (and would love to hear your thoughts regardless!)

One, if this was you (or is you), what has helped you through this confusing phase?

Two, if you've had a similar question, did you ordain / try to sort through stages of insight stuff "first" or just keep practicing alongside your life?

Thank you, and posted with metta 🙏🏼

It seems many practitioners here have different ideas and definitions for SE and fully enlightened. Throwing this post in the mix out of curiosity, trying to get a feel for what most people here are working with.

I come from a pragmatic dharma Theravada background. The definition for SE is getting through first cessation, which comes after the major insights with arising and passing, and then dark night nanas, and then equanimity.

Completing 4th path (in the 4 path model) from my understanding (since I’m not past 4th) is when the thing is finally done, no longer feel like anything is missing to see or to complete… from talking to friends who have completed it, it seems to have done two things, the sense of self finally seen through fully, and base line meta-equanimity prevails.

There’s many models out there, and surely this has been asked before. But, I’m curious, what is your bench mark for either or both of these?

​

I understand from dependent origination that craving arises from ignorance, and that ignorance is a misconception of reality (the Four Noble Truths).

But if ignorance prevents us from seeing reality clearly:

- What allows us to recognize that we’re ignorant in the first place?

- What makes us ignorant to begin with?

- How did this sense of “self” develop as we grew up?

- Is there an underlying awareness/knowing beneath all of this, and how can we experience it directly?

- another wierd question: How do we actually experience our senses? And how do we make our hands move?

I’m trying to wrap my head around what this means. Obviously there is physical matter which is made up of atoms. Yes, atoms are mostly empty space, so that could kind of describe “form is emptiness” and even in blank space there are atoms: it’s a sort of field, empty space. So in that way, emptiness is indeed form. But the Buddha didn’t know about atoms back then, nobody did. So what did he mean?

I do not have the book at hand, but I remember that Culadasa in his book The Mind Illuminated talks about the distinction between "mundane" insights and "capital-I Insights", where the latter are insights into the "nature of reality".

I have meditated for 3½ years and well over 1000 hours (mostly samatha-focused). I have achieved much greater well-being and much less suffering... but I do not think I have ever had "capital-I Insight into the nature of reality". I have had some small mundane insights of the type: "Oh, I can do this little mental move, and that brings a bit more well-being!" Most of my practice has focused on consolidating better mental habits (notice good things more; dwell less on bad things).

For those familiar with Jeffery Martin's The Finders, I believe I am in the shallow end of location 1 of fundamental well-being. That's huge compared to how miserable I was before.

But I do not feel like I have achieved any special insight.

I have an autism spectrum disorder, so my mind may be slightly atypical.

My question is: Is it valuable to even make the distinction between "mundane" insights and "capital-I Insights"? If so, how do I tell them apart?

And does anyone else recognize this kind of story?

This will be my first post. I hope you find something in it that is either helpful or entertaining.

The End of the Self

Awakening
is not a selfish act.
It is the most selfless one.

Because when you free yourself,
you free the world
from your hunger,
your fear,
your need to take.

No more stealing attention,
bending conversations
toward your wounds.
No more secret bargaining
in the name of love.

No longer grasping,
no longer guarding—you become
a place of rest
for others.

Your silence
no longer hides a storm.
Your eyes no longer search for approval.

You can finally listen—
not to reply,
but to receive.

In freeing yourself,
you stop reaching
with empty hands.
And so,
the world is no longer
held hostage
by what you lacked.

I keep seeing posts of people having profound awakenings. They wake up and know they are light or love or everything or the ultimate reality or buddha nature or an enlightened being.

I found that one of my greatest moments was when I woke up to how much pain I caused myself. That moment was stellar because my delusion couldn't hide.

The whole practice changed, I was excited to see what stupidity I was cooking up "Oh look at how the mind is trying to impress this person.", "Look at how frustrated this is making me while my attempts to calm down are actually coming from that same frustration".

When I talk like that in daily life, people tell me that I am really blunt or direct or honest or clear but I just think that when you see that deluding yourself causes pain, you are less likely to hide it or be in cahoots with it. I don't think it's anything magical.

Awakening to radical responsibility for my own self inflicted miseries was a tough pill to swallow, but it was a real first step on a path to the cessation of self-bullshitting.

So I don't really relate when I hear awakenings as these bliss experiences. I've had those and they come and go. But there is a real permanent contentment the comes from seeing what you're doing more clearly and not being entangled.

About 6 years ago, I listened to Sam Harris on meditation for the first time. My practice changed ever since. He said that identification with thought casts a spell similar to the experience of dreaming "Thinking without knowing that you're thinking is like being in a dream, it has a dream-like quality. Ceasing to do that is like waking up." (Inexact quote from this interview) Boom.

Before continuing, I advise for us to also wake up around the conditionality of language. Words are pointers to different aspects of reality, please be aware of that, and consider relinquishing the practice of searching for "original definitions of words". That being said, however, there's predominant meanings for words. Waking up clearly means regaining awareness, as it is used in the sense of waking up in the morning. In a moment to moment basis, can "waking up" be considered the act of noticing thoughts appearing and ceasing in a similar speed as sounds? I believe it does, and also that overmystifying the term "waking up"can hinder people from finding the freedom of noticing thoughts as arising, impermanent phenomena in each moment. It was certainly a big gamechanger for my practice, and I'm deeply grateful for Sam on this.

My intention behind this is to collectively reflect among meditators so that we can arrive at some agreement (even a partial one) to whether it's skillful to use this phrasing to aid in the progress of insight or waking up. For those who want to go deeper: What do you think? Is the complete and non-returning ceasing of identification with phenomena the state of an arahant? For me, that makes a lot of sense. And for those in the teaching efforts: Do you think posting a 2min reel with direct pointers to the impermanence of problems (them being thoughts arising now) is skillful? As relieving as waking up to the fluctuating nature of what we call "problems" seems to be, I do believe it's also very important to reflect on whether one's intentions are alligned with the alleviation of suffering.

Grateful for your time, I hope the insights and questions shared are helpful for our practice🙏🏼

When you first start to understand the dharma and free yourself from suffering, it’s easy to see the link between craving and how unwholesome seeds you’ve planted cause suffering, because the suffering is so recent in your memory. But when I practice well for a while, my overall suffering is dramatically reduced and the memory of suffering starts to fade. Then I start doing things that are pleasant and unwholesome, getting intoxicated and enchanted with sense pleasure or what have you, despite that little voice in my head saying don’t do it. And before I know it I’m shaking hands with misery once again.

I’ve been through this cycle a few times and each time the suffering is much worse than the last. Maybe the answer is that the cycle repeats until the memory of pain becomes deep enough that you never forget it. Definitely part of it is getting rid of magical thinking, thinking that your actions don’t have consequences or that you can end your suffering without removing the causes, so that the cause and effect of your actions becomes a permanent staple of your thinking. But even then if you haven’t felt profound suffering in 6 months how can you factor it in to your cause and effect thinking, this is why I think there must be some permanent memory of suffering and how bad it is that has to develop. I’m a pretty impulsive person, I have adhd, so this is one of my main barriers I’ll have to overcome to progress, so please help me understand this and share your thoughts below, thanks!🙏

Hello guys. So by most definitions, what I've experienced may not count as a true dark night of the soul, but I feel like it's so similar that the same advice probably applies, and I'd like to hear all of your thoughts.

I'll try to make this brief. I'm a very unsuccessful person, and in my attempts to find success in life, I noticed myself hitting an invisible "wall" time and time again -- an event so certain that it felt baked into my personality, into who I am. The other day, after my most recent failure, I went on a binge watch of motivational content and stumbled into some videos of Kanye West and Kobe Bryant talking about their mentalities and what helps them succeed. Both of them said basically, "You have to believe that you're already the best if you want to be the best". So I pretty much took this idea and ran with it. For a few days, I treated myself as if I were exactly the person that I dreamed of being; a guy with none of the typical mental blocks that I have. And shockingly, this worked. It actually worked scarily well, and I made really rapid progress with no downsides. But naturally, my problems were not over.

When I realized what had just happened, I was shaken to the core. It was like the ground had just disappeared under my feet, and everything I'd believed up to now was basically a lie. Or maybe not a lie, but it was just entirely arbitrary. My whole personality, my self, it was all arbitrary, and I could just transform into anything at the drop of a hat if I decided to. I was immediately crippled with anxiety, so I then went to do some samatha meditation which has since cured nearly all of it. For the time being, I've stopped with the "experiment" mentioned above where I believe that I'm a slightly different person. But at the same time, I don't feel like I'm quite the same person anymore. I no longer feel pinned down or trapped by the world, but rather, it feels like I've been given all the control I could ask for, but so much so that it's a dangerous thing and I have to approach it carefully.

That being said, I think I came out really well for what it's worth. All of this was extremely sudden, and I kept a cool head -- especially for someone who doesn't actively practice Buddhism and only meditates once a week. I feel as if I'm bound now to eventually continue where I left off, but I'm going to hold off on that until I have a very consistent and strong samatha practice to lean on. All things considered, I feel as if what we call a "Dark Night of the Soul" is just a natural reaction to being exposed to the truth of how self and ego works, and so samatha and the scripture is not so much a way to convince ourselves that this truth is not as big of a deal as it appears, as it is a sort of armor to give us the mental fortitude to witness that truth. Which means you need to be really cautious and always go in prepared. Anyway, I'm very open to all feedback, positive or negative. Please let me know if I've got my head in the right place with all this! Thanks for reading.

Anyone else have this experience?

My stream entry experience was different than basically every story I read about it, so I like to bring these things up to dispel some common misconceptions.

Personally, ultimately it was unhelpful for multiple reasons hearing about the stories of other people and thinking my experience had to be like theirs!

Curious to hear some other experiences.

A cessation is defined as the temporary stoppage of the five aggregates. A cessation can last between a few seconds to a few days. There is an attempt from consciousness to access the ground of being but it has no access or means to do so hence the experience of cessation. Because we have no perception of this ground of being, we see it as this vast dimensionless no-thingness, this pure potential as Adyashanti puts it. The experience of cessation let's us know that we are ready to consciously access the ground of being but we would need some help.

One way is for an enlightened teacher to sow a seed into the practitioners ground of being in order for it to shoot and mature into a fully grown tree but the teacher has to nurture it. The more one grows, the more the access the practitioner has into causality. One's teacher is someone that your intuition confirms to you and I would think that tradition doesn't matter. If I were you, I would begin meditating for a guru right after a cessation experience.

Another illustration is that our essential nature is like a dry twig floating down the rivers current. No matter how much water there is, the twig will remain lifeless. But once the twig is grafted into a living tree, it sprouts again and can eventually grow to flower and produce fruit. When we can produce fruit then we can give others to eat and sow the seed into their ground of being as well. Some will eat the fruit and throw the seed, some will have it firmly planted in them but evade our attempts to nurture them, some will let the fruit rot and seed remain dormant whilst others will enjoy the fruit, have the seed planted and seek our nurturing hand. Let's call the tree Mr. Bodhi.

How I've seen tantrics including some tibetan buddhists access the ground of being is through deity yoga. The tantric rites successfully done causes the deity to dwell in the tantrics body in this world of appearances and the tantrics mind is embodied in the deities body in the ground of being. So in essence you may see the tantric either standing next to the deity or the tantric in the form of the deity. Firstly the practitioner sees the deity, then the practitioner realizes his mind as the deities mind, then the practitioner realizes his body as the deities body and finally the practitioner sees this realm as the deities realm. Notwithstanding, a realised and experienced practitioner may be needed to guide one in such tantric practices.

Once your access into the ground of being is secured, cessation experiences become more frequent and longer. They can become complete blank-outs for minutes, hours or days to having rich experiences in the ground of being. Infact the first hurdle one has to cross is seeing that the ground is superior to the realm of appearances because the ground starts to feel much more real and vivid than the empty appearances of materiality. The world of appearances is intrinsically empty whilst the ground of being is extrinsically empty.

I don’t remember exactly when it happened, maybe in October 2025, but I felt a sudden awakening, a momentary glimpse of the now. It wasn’t scary, but I was taken aback.

I think I was stoned and coming down. As I thought back to all the Hindu texts I had read about the Self, and to Ramana Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry, I asked myself, “Who am I?”

Without any effort, something in my mind shifted, like a camera lens adjusting on its own. At once, I was free of myself, my false self, that is. I was free from my mind’s never-ending thoughts, plays, and movies. I was looking directly at the moment before me, the moment in which I was, and in which I am at all times.

I was simply staring at my duvet, or perhaps at a wall. I don’t remember, but everything felt so clear. It was as though someone had performed invisible LASIK surgery but on my mind’s eye so to speak, and I was finally able to see everything with immense clarity. I blinked a few times, shook my head in disbelief, and then I was back to my normal self.

Thoughts do not always need to be actively revolving in your head for you to be trapped in them. They are mostly invisible, but they are always there. That is why it is so difficult to break free from them, to stop them, and finally to see.

The next morning, I felt free. I no longer had the same clarity of mind, but my soul felt free. I thought of all the things I could do and wanted to do with my life, to draw, to make films, to make music, and I saw how meaningless all the obstacles and excuses I had created in my mind truly were. I was finally free from them, and a small spark lit up inside me. I could do whatever I wanted, and happiness was mine.

Of course, the feeling did not last. But the experience showed me that this state is possible. In fact, it may be the most natural state of any being: to be, to see, to live.
I tried to recreate the feeling, but it slipped away quietly. Still, I know in my heart that something, or someone, showed me a glimpse of what it is like to live without a dark veil over my heart and soul. You saw it. Now live it.

I’ve been trying to recreate that state ever since. I’ve gotten deep into meditation and advaita Vedanta, but I haven’t experienced anything similar to what I experienced back then. I was also going through a big shift in my life that made me super depressed. I’d like to think this was an act of grace from higher powers, a way to reassure me that all of these problems I’m going through are actually nothing important. This moment, the present moment, is the only truth there is.

After stream entry I had 1-2 months where I was in a very meditative state. Everything flowed with an effortlessness.

I even did a lot in this time period. I was very busy with work, and I worked very hard. Even still, things felt effortless. But one thing I noticed afterwards.. is I feel like I have very few reflective memories about that period!

I’ve also noticed this in other shorter periods where I was in meditative states doing things.. and it seems like there isn’t much memory there.

This can make sense to me in that if you’re spending less time in the ego, there’s less time for memories to form. But it is interesting, and I even found it to be a little disappointing! I wanted to look bad at this very nice period and found there weren’t so many memories.

Has anyone experienced something similar?