This stage is often, though not always, like a brick wall,
particularly the first few times we collide with it.
It can be as if all the worst aspects of the Dark Night stages
converge for one last important lesson,
that of Re-observation.
We must perceive the true nature of the sensations
that make up our ideas of perfection, all the ideals we cling to,
all images of how the world should and should not be,
all desire for anything to be other than exactly the way it is,
as well as all desire for awakening to be anything other than this.
~~~
It may seem impossible to sit for even a minute,
as the levels of restlessness and aversion to meditation and all experience
can get high.
The sudden complete inability to sit on the cushion for even a few minutes
is a classic mark of this stage.
This stage, and part of the stage of Three Characteristics share some features.
In other words, be warned,
particularly those of you who are prone to being overly certain about
“where you are” on these maps.
I get a reasonable number of emails and calls from people
who claim they are certain they are in Re-observation, and shortly thereafter
they are describing A&P territory,
meaning that they had just been in Three Characteristics territory,
not Re-observation.
Continuing to investigate the true nature of these sorts of sensations
and our map theories is often difficult,
and this is a common cause of failure to progress.
Re-observation need not be a problem if you have very solid meditation skills. Even if you don’t,
it still need not be a big deal if you know what to look for,
what to expect, how to handle it, and that it too shall pass.
It is like a hologram of a snarling demon that you can just walk right through
and it can’t touch or harm you at all.
There is a curious freedom when you deeply realize that
you are safe in Re-observation, that you can go deep into the pit,
and the pit is just fine.
Exercise often helps.
Loving-kindness practices get recommended often for good reason.
Strict vipassana and ultra-rapid noting work well
for those with a high tolerance for pain.
Slower noting might work for those with a bit more time
and less interest in shattering themselves.
Many of these methods just require doing them well enough for long enough
to get them to cause progress.
Experimentation and a willingness to regroup and retry
if you fail with one approach are key, as
failure and frustration are common experiences the first few times we try to
crack the nut of the Dark Night.
~~~
If you are on retreat,
it typically only takes about ten days to two weeks of struggling in the Dark Night
to fall back to earlier stages and have another shot at it,
so you can try a new strategy on the next pass if the first pass strategy didn’t work.
I still generally feel that very simple practice:
six sense doors, three characteristics,
is the best practice for all insight stages.
There can be the distinct feeling that there is no way to go forward,
and it is useless to go back, which is exactly the lesson we should learn.
Acceptance of exactly this, right here and right now, is required,
even if it seems that this mind and this body are completely unacceptable
and unworthy objects of investigation.
Remember:
No sensations are unworthy of investigation!
One of the hallmarks of the early part of this stage is that
we may begin to clearly see exactly what our minds do all day long,
see with great clarity
how the illusion of a dualistic split is created in the first place,
sensation by sensation, moment to moment, but
there is not yet enough of a meta-perspective and equanimity
to make good use of this information.
This can be very frustrating,
as we wonder how many times we must learn these lessons before they stick.
The interesting thing is that this stage,
when gone through at the level of emotions and vibrations,
rather than in the realms of light produced by strong concentration,
will nearly always come with a sense that
it lasted just a bit longer than we could take it, and yet somehow,
we can take it, and it does end.
~~~
Re-observation can take whatever issues and reactions arose in the earlier stages of
Fear, Misery, Disgust, and Desire for Deliverance,
combine them in fiendish ways, and then crank that intensity to the next level,
a level that can seem overwhelming.
These aspects of our life can temporarily seem bland and pointless at this stage,
though it may seem that this will always be the way we feel about them.
Layers of unhelpful and previously hidden expectation, pressure, and anxiety
can reveal their true uselessness,
though this beneficial process can feel very confusing and difficult.
We may get the sense that we have never had such a strong emotional life,
and until we get used to this new awareness of our
previously subtle or unacknowledged feelings,
this stage can seem overwhelming.
~~~
Even for those who do get into this in a well-developed tradition,
unrealistic spiritual ideals can really screw up practice.
In your idealized spiritual world,
you imagine you aren’t supposed to be insanely frustrated, on edge,
shuddering from some strange wrongness you can’t figure out,
because you are a meditator,
you are practicing something good, and so you shouldn’t feel this way,
or at least so the traditions might seem to tell us.
However,
this is exactly where your practice led you at some point, where it took you,
what is really going on,
because you have entered aspects of the human psyche
you wished would just go away and you wouldn’t have to deal with.
Go into them, but with wisdom, with clear morality,
with some sense that you can go there and be okay,
with some control of what you think, say, and do.
It can seem counterintuitive to keep practicing when things feel so unproductive,
unspiritual, unpleasant, and unbearable, but keeping at it in skillful ways
builds the wiring that leads to the good stuff that comes in the next stage
even if it feels like it is doing nothing good at all.
~~~
This stage is a profound opportunity to see clearly
the pain of the dualistic aspect of our
attachments, aversions, desires, hopes, fears, and ideals,
as our awareness of all this
has been amplified to an unprecedented level.
At its best,
it is very humanizing and very emotionally honest.
This is the stage that makes possible the path of heroic effort,
the diligent investigation of this moment based upon
the powerful wish for awakening,
because at this stage all the unskillful aspects of this wish
are beaten out of the meditator with a force equal to
the suffering caused by them.
~~~
You can get very far on highly imbalanced and goal-oriented practice,
and it can provide sufficient momentum and meditation skills so that,
should you get your ass kicked at this stage,
you continue making quick progress anyway,
even when you drop off the imbalanced striving power
and let the insight machine you have built
coast somewhat on its own momentum.
~~~
The framework of the three trainings and the three types of suffering
that are found within each of their scopes can be helpful here as well.
Since most of us are generally not used to facing fundamental identity crises,
which is the basic issue in Re-observation,
we are not familiar with the misery of fundamental suffering.
Being unfamiliar with that misery,
we are likely to conclude that it is produced by the specifics of our ordinary world
and personal circumstances.
However,
if we have gotten to Re-observation, that is,
if we have found these techniques to be effective,
we need to have faith that the remaining advice may be of value
to fulfill this part of the experiment.
~~~
If we are in Re-observation,
the task that confronts us is to tease out the fundamental suffering
we now know all too well from the specific problems of our lives
in an ordinary sense.
Remember the five spiritual faculties?
Remember balancing faith and wisdom?
This is one phase of practice when you get to see what that truly means,
as it will test both.
In an ideal world, we would really have our psychological trip together,
be able to stay with the practice during these stages, and thus
cross quickly through the Dark Night and finish this practice cycle.
It can be done.
There are also those who try to investigate
the true nature of their psychological demons and life issues
but get so fixated on using insight to make them go away
that they fail to hold these things in perspective.
This subtle but common corruption of insight practices
turns practice into another form of aversion, escape, or denial
rather than a path to awakening.
~~~
Drawing from the agendas of mostly psychology and confused morality,
in which there is concern for the specific thoughts and feelings
that make up our experience, we fail to make progress in insight,
whose agenda is simply to see the true nature of all sensations as they are.
Both are important, but it is a question of timing.
Scary stuff said,
there are people who breeze straight from the Arising and Passing Away
through the whole of the Dark Night in as little as a few easy minutes or hours
and hardly notice it at all,
so don’t let my descriptions of what can happen script you into imagining
that the Dark Night has to be a major suffering event.
It absolutely does not.
Try to navigate the Dark Night with
panache, dignity, self-respect, decency, gentleness, poise, and if possible,
a sense of humor, which often seems to be
the first thing to be sacrificed at its bloody altar.
Even a cutting, cynical, and dark sense of humor about your current experience
would be better than none at all, but avoid hurting people with it.
Feel free to use humor on yourself as much as you wish.
Remember to balance all that with some honest humanity.
It is actually possible to have fun with the Dark Night,
just like it can be fun to go on a scary roller coaster or see a scary movie,
like the alleviating feeling of a really good cry,
like the weird thrill that comes from primal scream therapy.
Remember that.
This is vipassana.
Notice that every little background sensation
already is its own comprehension,
where it is, as it arose and vanished, and that
trying to pretend to be a little point in space observing and
controlling all that sensate complexity
is absurd and just causes suffering:
that is the lesson here.
That is the three characteristics,
and the three characteristics are the key in this stage, as with all the others.
Do not get all caught up in my psychological descriptions,
they are there to help only if you get thrown totally off your vipassana game.
As soon as you get back on your game even a little bit,
get back to noticing all this come and go on its own, naturally, effortlessly,
at a basic, fast, sensate level.
This is the most important paragraph of this whole section.
One way or another, when we finally give up and rest in what is happening
without trying to alter it or stabilize it,
when we can accept our actual humanity
as well as be clear about the three characteristics of
naturally flowing mental and physical phenomena,
there arises…
EQUANIMITY
This article was Inspired by
Buddha’s step by step instructions to obtain Enlightenment
as refined by The Arahant Daneil M. Ingram.
Buy this book for Full Immersion!
