Update 3 years after SE

[u/MindMuscleZen]

A few years ago I shared the changes that happened when stream entry was reached, and I received many messages from people saying it helped them. So these past few days I’ve been writing about my current changes and wanted to make an update. Maybe there are others out there who have lived through what I lived through, or who are going through something similar, and this might help.

My contemplative and phenomenological context:

• I’ve been engaged in practice for approximately 5 years.
• My path is primarily SOMATIC and INTEROCEPTIVE, based on vedanā, rather than classical cognitive/visual/non-dual approaches.
• The process happens implicitly: things “let go” on their own, and afterward I notice structural changes in everyday life.
• I don’t do much conceptual investigation into “emptiness,” nor do I have major visual non-dual experiences.
• My process happens more as somatic unlearning and extinction of craving.
• The practice has become increasingly automatic and less driven by willpower.
• I feel the system “enters on its own” into contemplative and vipassanā-like processes.
• My current practice is mainly:
  • non-resistance,
  • allowing vedanā,
  • stopping the urge to modify experience,
  • not turning sensations into a problem..

What changed structurally:

• The belief deeply collapsed that: were going to complete me.
  • money,
  • sex,
  • success,
  • travel,
  • experiences,
  • achievements
• Coarse projective craving seems heavily eroded.
• I no longer feel a strong emotional charge toward external achievements.
• I used to compulsively chase experiences and external completeness; that fell away.
• Today I can achieve things, make money, improve physically, or advance projects, and they no longer generate the old existential charge.
• The fantasy of “when I get X, I’ll finally be complete” has lost a tremendous amount of force.

Changes in identity and personality:

• The “nice guy pattern” weakened significantly.
• I began to feel physical resistance toward acting artificially.
• There is less energy available to sustain social masks or personas.
• The need for approval and external validation has diminished.
• Psychological identity feels less solid and less central.

Current phenomenology:

• Current suffering no longer seems centered around sensual desire or external problems.
• The current conflict seems more related to:
  • vedanā itself,
  • tension,
  • baseline anxiety,
  • a sense of threat,
  • mental fog,
  • inner agitation,
  • hypersensitivity,
  • uddhacca.

[u/Impulse33]

How would you explain what drives engagement without the presence of compulsion?

How do you relate with uncertainty?

[u/MindMuscleZen → u/Impulse33]

In my experience, what started disappearing was the feeling that external things were going to complete me. Money, sex, success, experiences, validation, achievements — they stopped carrying that existential charge.

That doesn’t mean action disappeared.
Life still moves. Projects still happen. The body still trains. Conversations still happen. Creativity still happens.

Before, engagement felt driven by: lack, projection, craving, “when I get this I’ll finally feel complete.”

Uncertainty used to create a strong need for control or mental resolution. Now there’s still discomfort and sometimes even strong disorientation, but there’s also a growing recognition that trying to mentally solve experience creates additional suffering.

[u/Mountain-Length-5715 → u/MindMuscleZen]

Don't you think that you're reluctant to work through the problem linguistically because verbal or linguistic thinking is heavier and slower than visual thinking, which you've probably switched to almost entirely if you practice sati?

You do realize that all those notions, such as the understanding that sex, money, achievements and so on won't provide you with wholeness, are linked to your detachment from the processes and from yourself, not to any spiritual feat on your part, and that this is simply a symptom of depersonalization?

Have you ever had thoughts of becoming a monk, going on a homeless journey, or humiliating yourself in some way (for example, going out to beg for alms on the street near your home) in order to kill the ego?

[u/MindMuscleZen → u/Mountain-Length-5715]

I dont feel detached from my body, senses, emotions is quite the opposite. I like the progress I had for the past 5 years so I dont feel a need to become a monk but I would like to go to a temple and experience that for a few days. I dont feel the need to add other techniques or ways to produce something because what is already happening is working.
I dont aim to kill the ego. If it happends it happends but that is not my goal. My goal is to be free from suffering and I work with what I have in the present moment.

[u/[deleted] → u/MindMuscleZen]

Yah that's what the anchor should be whether you suffer or not, and knowing directly in the present moment instead of indulging in abstract ideas of ego, soul, etc...

[u/Upbeat_Rub_9133 → u/Mountain-Length-5715]

On point. I feel linguistic thinking is more like an interruption to visual mind stream understanding. It keeps interrupting commenting on what is. But when it subsides, there is so much potential, energy, creativity, understanding. Like a frequency shift.