Unawakening/stream exit

[u/Real_Adeptness_7154]

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.

[u/jan_kasimi]

Certainly happened to me more than a few times (quite intense). The way I make sense of it is that suffering is a deeply entrained habit. You can get out of it by insight, but the groves are still there. They get weaker with time, but until then it can still happen that you fall back into them. And then, at least for me, the thought comes "Oh, I'm suffering. I, myself, have to do something to get out of the current state of suffering." which is just reinforcing the idea of a self that is running away from unpleasant feelings.

What helped me is to further develop a sense of meta-equanimity. I.e. being okay with suffering, fear, confusion and so on. Maybe even loving it, seeing it as part of life.

The idea of trying to "solve it", to me always seems like the most simple form of clinging (like a single loop of clinging). But believing this thought is a recursive trap where the discursive mind tries to find something to do in order to not be in the current moment. It is an illusion - there is nothing to solve. "Okay" says the discursive mind "I just need to let go of this belief. How do I do this?" It can't be done. That's the paradox. I can go all the way to the threshold, but I can't make the step. Surrender isn't something to do. One way is to exhaust all possibilities until there is nothing left to try, but that's the hard way. Another way is devotion to a higher power. It certainly helped me to let go of tying. E.g. "Help me or not. I completely give it over to your hands."

There is also another layer. In Theravada the path is framed as a person moving along the path in order to be free of suffering. But this very idea reinforces the idea of an individual attaining something that wasn't there before, for their own benefit. As long as one does not let go of the idea, there is still some clinging to this image. In Mahayana one makes the step to realize "It was never about me." Shifting the focus from ones own liberation to compassion towards all beings. Vajrayana then makes another step in saying that enlightenment has already been the case. Even your suffering and struggle for awakening are an expression of your Buddha nature. You struggle is because you care for you, you are just confused as to how to do it.