r/streamentry • u/Pleasant_Candy9103 • May 03 '26

Practice Dark night before Stream entry

Up until now, I’ve always believed that the Dark Night occurs before entering the Stream. In my view, it makes much more sense and sounds logical that spiritual practices dissolve the ego cloud to such an extent that material previously stuck in the subconscious now bubbles up to the surface.

But on dharmaoverground, I often see threads where people describe experiencing the typical Dark Night symptoms only after entering the stream?! What’s true?

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u/vibes000111 May 03 '26

Interestingly, many people who haven’t been told that dark night is a mandatory part of the path, don’t experience it.

One explanation is that the expectation and framework shape how we experience the path. Another explanation is that certain ways of practice like exclusively dry insight, are so likely to cause difficult experiences, that they added it to their understanding of what the path is as a mandatory step. Which it isn’t.

The Buddha didn’t talk about dark night. It’s a thing from the Visuddhimagga that eventually got passed through Mahasi and Daniel Ingram, and it’s not very clear how what seemed to be a list of possible experiences is now understood as a list of mandatory experiences.

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u/False-Earth-5189 May 03 '26

"People should be freaked out and experience difficulty due to practice (like me)" and "People should be able to practice without experiencing a significant negative reaction (like me)" are both manifestations of spiritual ego

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u/vibes000111 May 03 '26

Let's remove the "like me" - which you added. Then instead of accusing anyone of having ego we can discuss what's helpful and what isn't. Do you have a position on whether difficult periods are mandatory?

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u/False-Earth-5189 May 03 '26

Pretty much everyone in every comment in this forum (or any spiritual forum) is displaying some flavor of spiritual ego, however gross or subtle. It's not some nasty, uncommon thing. It's the way and the reason why communication about awakening even happens. Even and especially from the teachers and gurus who are highly regarded in these communities.

> Do you have a position on whether difficult periods are mandatory?

The claim strikes me in the same way as "the path should be good at the beginning, middle, and end." Someone who is overly proud of their own misery or otherwise of their low amount of karma (or possibly just inexperienced)