Potential mini-ephiphany about the A&P stage/event

I was practicing through the stages of the progress of insight yesterday while snuggling with my daughter during her late-afternoon nap. I noticed something interesting about the Arising and Passing stage (A&P), and was surprised I didn't think of it before; especially since it's seems so basic.

Simply put, clinging to a self-referencing narrative takes a lot of energy. So much, in fact, that things can become dull and imbalanced. When we relax into meditation, and pay attention to just how fleeting and non-personal events of body and mind are, we stop clinging so much. But the energy that was previously restrained by clinging has nowhere to go, so it releases with some measure of intensity. This is particularly so the first time it happens.

What follows is what seems to be a natural reorganization of the relationship between energies, along with a further dismantling of more subtle forms of clinging. This eventually results in complete, although momentary disbanding of clinging (i.e. fruition/cessation). But I digress...

The basic point is that energy is bottle up prior to the A&P. When the container cracks, the system sort of implodes and is allowed to reorganize. Pretty cool.

Of course, I'm not saying this is what the A&P event REALLY is, as opposed to any other interpretation or explanation. Nor do I think this idea is brand new. I'm sure it's been arrived at before, and more than likely explained better than what I just laid out. I just thought it was a simple and helpful explanation, and thought it would be fun to share with you all.

Thoughts?

Also, has anyone come up with their own mini-explanation that they find helpful? If so, please share.

I'll just throw a random thing in the pile - I notice that in myself that concentrating on body sensations closely (such doing "mindfulness of breath") sets off releases of strong energy, with heating of the body, trembling, bliss and so on. I also noticed that the preliminary levels of qi gong practice are heavily oriented towards training in micro-levels of muscular relaxation.

I've wondered if part of the effectiveness of meditation practices comes from their blending of relaxation and attention to body or breathing (which is body)....

Tension in the muscles seems often tied to emotional/psychological discomfort/anxiety. (Even in animals, an animal that feels safe and trusting relaxes, one that is suspicious and afraid holds body tension; horses came to my trainer with years of habitual tension, sometimes, resulting in awkward postures, soreness, stiff movement, etc. After retraining in a safe/trusting environment, they changed physically as well as behaviorally, losing the awkward musculature and stiffness...)

Try this on for size. My wife talks to me about this stuff with me with great interest but has no interest in doing her own mediation practice. Until a couple weeks ago. Literally the moment of my latest shift, it triggered an A&P in her and she suddenly 'gets it' and has been practicing every day since.

I know this doesn't help in explaining what it is, but wow, what the heck? Right?

What made hers happen? Transference of energy? Just coincidence?

A lot of ways of being are "transferable" - maybe it's just same way you start laughing when you watch other people laughing, maybe more complex. Trance states are transferable (not 100% so, but if the recipient has some sort of unknown causes and conditions in place to make that feasible). Smiles and tears transfer. Courage, too. Fear, panic... We are so social. Maybe it is connected in that way?

@Ona: Yes, there seems to be a recipricol relationship between psychological tension and physical tension. Changes in one seem to affect changes in the other. The openning lines of the Dhammapada would suggest mind is primary (e.g. "Mind is the forerunner of all things..."). Whether or not that's true is beside the point, perhaps, since relaxing the body usually relaxes the mind. I guess that's why we all start with mindfulness of body/breathing.

@Russell: Very interesting indeed. I've had similar experiences, even recently. I tend to practice while laying in bed during my daughter's naps. About a month ago while she was napping in her crib, I was practicing while laying down. I experienced quite the energetic surge, which was silent as far as my ears could tell. But this surge coincided precisely with my daughter waking up, almost like there was a disturbance in the force, or something like that Pretty neat stuff. I think there's a significant body of evidence suggesting consciousness is not restricted to the confines of individual skulls. Something seems to bridge the gap.

In horses, the training my teacher did consisted of both mind/body: gymnastic exercises and lots of free time in a herd to encourage relaxation (even massage and chiropractice and accupuncture sometimes), combined with a very steady consistent behavior with very predictable requests and rewards, so the horse could begin to stop worrying about erratic human reactions.

Jackson, I like your model! I think it's a very pragmatic description Not only that but if we extend it into the dark night territory, it continues to make sense as increasingly implicit/subtle forms of clinging begin to be revealed (made explicit) and as de-clinging sets in on more visceral levels, quite turbulent energies can be released.

Also your story reminded me of a common feature of my sitting practice in the run up to stream entry. My son was just nearing his first birthday and towards the end of my first insight cycle I would practice whenever he napped. Hilariously (and conveniently, from my egoic point of view anyhow!) as soon as I would hit the peak of re-observation, which at that time tended to manifest as extremely discordant interference patterns of energy in my throat area, my son would without fail cry out and awaken. The darndest thing!

A friend of mine said she uses metta practice to quiet fussing babies on airplanes, and has also used it to calm barking dogs. YMMV.

When we first brought my daughter home the hospital, I used to practice tonglen (taking and sending) while holding or rocking her. She seemed to calm down and fall asleep more quickly when I did this.

It's amazing how perceptive babies are. Also non-human animals. Most of us human grown ups have to work at getting back in touch with that kind of perception. I blame public schools

jake wrote: Jackson, I like your model! I think it's a very pragmatic description Not only that but if we extend it into the dark night territory, it continues to make sense as increasingly implicit/subtle forms of clinging begin to be revealed (made explicit) and as de-clinging sets in on more visceral levels, quite turbulent energies can be released.

Yah, that's pretty much what I was thinking! I'm glad you shared your thoughts, 'cause I don't think I would have put it quite so well.

When talking about the several "bodies" [aka "kayas," "spheres of being] of living beings, my teacher Ming always points out the social body: it's another layer, like physical. energetic, mind. It's another feature of our lives, ALL of which are 'interdependently co-arising.' Separation is an illusion that takes a lot of concentration/tension to maintain.

YES Kate!

This applies to the one-on-one interaction of a father with his child, and to the whole social mandala we find ourselves in in my experience. Over the past two years especially as the fallout from awakening has settled down and rewired so much of my inner energy and begun to become reflected in my outer activity, my circumstances have completely transformed. Pretty intense!

And a big YES to the tonglen story and your observations, Jackson. Indeed especially during infancy I often felt a sort of mind-to-mind transmission of the natural state coming from my son. We would make eye contact and that 'flash' of recognition dissolving all duality yet highlighting the vast and luminous World of differences and change would open up for a vivid timeless moment and we would both burst out in blissful laughter and he'd have this knowing look. So funny; who knows!

I think the camps that emphasize the innocence of babies and animals and their proximity to the Natural State AND those that emphasize their proximity to Innate Ignorance are both right. 'trailing clouds of glory indeed'

Not to be too much of a crank, but isn't every experience a contraction and a release of energy? (A&P just has more fireworks, more obvious.)



... and what is it with eyes? Why to they give us connection? I get it even looking at minnows! ???

shargrol wrote: Not to be too much of a crank, but isn't every experience a contraction and a release of energy? (A&P just has more fireworks, more obvious.)

That's a good point, and it doesn't make you a crank.

The A&P is not totaly unique in kind, but I think it is unique in its intensity and style of display. When there is a small crack in the side of a water tank, a little bit of water might trickle out. If the tank shatters, there's a flood.

shargrol wrote: ... and what is it with eyes? Why to they give us connection? I get it even looking at minnows! ???

Here's how one of the poetic champions [ T.S. Eliot, in Four Quartets] put it:
"And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at."

Other, older ways of describing our physiological functioning refer to this idea that light issues from the eye-- "eyebeams"-- and that this light affects other beings. I expect at least a few of us have experienced something like this. With infants, I have experienced a sense that this exchange is a necessary nourishment-- for both parties: that we're meant to behold and adore these new members of the human family.

Jackson Wilshire wrote: I noticed something interesting about the Arising and Passing stage (A&P) ... Simply put, clinging to a self-referencing narrative takes a lot of energy ... so it releases with some measure of intensity.

Yes. As I would put it, for most people there is a difference between what you are and what you think you are, and even if you are relatively "enlightened," sometimes there seems to be an especially big letting go of this difference, for me in a fairly emotional way. It is for me a great sense of relief much like certain moments you might experience while watching a good tearjerker movie. Typically this happens in A&P but I have experienced it in equanimity also, definitely in 5th jhana. Although you could get into the whole subnana thing.

When I first came across this, I thought of it as the experience of letting go of decades of conditioning. And of course you could label it as ego-death or whatever. I tend to think of this phenomenon as closely tied to A&P, i.e. much more likely in that territory but not exclusively.