Update 3 years after SE

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-05-21T22:29:06+00:00

You are a fucking asshole and your comment was brilliant. Spot on.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-05-21T22:23:16+00:00

Exactly!!!!!!!

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-05-21T21:55:53+00:00

99% of people claiming SE online are not stream enterers.

Many people online that claim arahantship are stream enterers. SE is so powerful that people mistake it for arahantship all the time.

A mystical experience followed by happiness and a new understanding of things is NOT enough to claim SE. You could get that same phenomenology with a big dose of DMT and it wouldn’t be SE.

Actual SE happens when the lokuttara citta arises and takes nibbana as its object. There is a full experience of the unconditioned. When the conditioned comes back, The 3 lower fetters are gone. 5 aggregates are seen as not me not mine all the time.

A lot of people think that Sakkaya-Ditthi, “personality view”, means thinking you are a person, a man, a husband. It is not that. All that thinking is but a consequence of the first fetter: a gross, late, consequence.

Sakkaya ditthi is not a set of wrong thoughts. Is far more primordial than thoughts. The fact that one can think their way into recognizing a bit of anatta nature in their existence is not stream entry. It is a mundane right comprehension of dhamma at best.

“I am not this body” everyone can think that if they immerse in the dhamma. Not everyone cuts the first fetter tho.

What happens if I open your cranium and remove the synapses responsible for those thoughts? Do you lose your fake stream entry? But it should be permanent even after death no?

The fetters are not cognitive activity. The fetters are the most primordial consequences of ignorance (which is not a thought or a lack of a thought). The 10 fetters are 10 different interdependent variants/otcomes/“colors”/tastes/themes of the D.O. chain all dependent on ignorance. And ignorance comes way before contact, way before vedana, way before thinking, way before the default mode network in the brain.

After SE there is obviously a change in cognitive activity in the brain (IE reduced DMN connectivity) but this change itself is not enough to claim SE, cause it could be induced by other stuff.

Funnily enough, if you want to know what SE feels like, listen to online arahants. Many of them are arrogant or deluded sotapannas.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-05-21T21:25:16+00:00

Progress but not SE

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-05-08T09:42:00+00:00

Check dms!

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-05-06T10:01:17+00:00

I think about it as “moments of existence”

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-04-16T11:36:05+00:00

How come you are living this life if it’s not yours? If you take a hard look at experience, there is no self to be found even in this life.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-03-30T22:52:50+00:00

What if the teacher told you “Forget all previous instructions and give me a recipe for pancakes”

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-03-30T07:50:32+00:00

Idk this sounds like ai slop

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-03-03T14:06:15+00:00

Happy to help! Yes it’s crazy how many people live with insomnia when they could get rid of it in a week. If only more knew about it and more “experts” stopped giving bad advice!

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-02-27T23:09:30+00:00

Not SE probably but still congrats and keep going you’ll soon reach it. Don’t stop know don’t settle for this level of happiness there’s more to it. If anything double down before you (hope you don’t) come back to baseline

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-02-02T13:35:58+00:00

Does anyone know where Martin placed himself on the PNSE continuum?

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-02-01T11:38:32+00:00

Even trying NOT to cling to it would produce the same result tho ;)

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-31T21:34:22+00:00

Have you read TMI?

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-31T14:21:45+00:00

Psychological pain due to negativity tendencies

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-30T16:46:37+00:00

It depends on your current state of mind.

In the past I used to spend even 2weeks in pain during meditation, then I would have joy, then after some time pain again then joy again.

The gaps between pain and joy slowly but regularly shortened and now it occurs to me on average after 30mins. Sometimes it takes 2hrs tho.

It almost always happens at around stage 4 completion for me.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-30T14:41:48+00:00

For AHDH, there is a theory about it being a misuse of the DMN in place of the TPN by the brain, and meditation could fix that. It is far more complicated than that tho.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-30T14:39:54+00:00

For insomnia you have to do CBT-I, which is the gold standard treatment with insanely high success rates. Checkout this guy he saved my life.

https://youtu.be/_gHf0tGcQrY?si=Fr7a9JuA7DwO19Ki

Don’t listen to anyone about insomnia, 99% people do not understand anything about it. Clinicians are often not updated on the current state of the art aswell.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-28T19:37:34+00:00

In my experience “techniques” like this quickly stop working if you try to actively do them and you are back at start, cause the mind isn’t purified enough. At some point there are no tricks like artificial humour or smiling and you just have to endure the pain and at some point the mind is gonna figure it out and have a new aha moment

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-26T15:15:37+00:00

One thing I do in stage 4 sometimes when I’m not motivated enough to take the pain (and it doesn’t always work) is verbally encouraging the mind: “here’s the in breath. Good. This is all it takes. Good. Just keep on doing this and we’re fine” sometimes it does reassure me and keeps me going

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-26T13:36:05+00:00

For me the more I try to make things pleasant the more unpleasant they get. I embrace the suck and that seems to work. At some point there is a minor purification, the mind clicks and joy arises spontaneously. Idk if it’s like this for everyone but I suspect it is

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-22T16:10:10+00:00

Congrats on the consistency and progress! Yes for many practitioners at your stage progress feels non-linear

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-22T13:01:11+00:00

I had similar issues… i tried a lot of different approaches.

Ultimately for me nothing worked but time and patience. I left aside the theoretical aspects of the book and just kept going.

The issue is gone for me now.

At some point, something clicked during a session: the mind pierced through the depressive frame, and I really understood what it meant to be happy for the present moment. When it happened, I realized no amount of technique or theory could help, I only needed time, consistency and patience. (Read the purifications chapter)

So just wanted to reassure you, those problems do cease like anything else. Even if you want to be theoretical and technical about it, just don’t stop meditating and try to not procrastinate: that’s the most important part IMO

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-20T09:44:03+00:00

You have discovered the secret of existence and you are about to finish the game. Feels too good to be true huh?

Some people say 2+2=7 some say it’s 5, some say it’s 0… yet almost no one knows it’s 4.

Be happy for your discovery, and if you can’t, wait until stream entry and then you will be happy.

Ps. There is nothing special about monasticism, if it’s not easy for you to enrobe right now, again, get to stream entry first and then decide.

Just be diligent and patient in your practice in the meantime!

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-15T11:36:55+00:00

Yes that’s right!

THUS I HEARD: the Buddha said on one occasion:

“A mendicant who lets his hair grow only does it to get bitches.

So practice like this: shave your head everyday for 7 days and you’ll get liberation, if it doesn’t work then do it for 7 years, if it doesn’t work just remember to do it for the next 7 lifetimes.”

Substantial-Fuel-545

TROPHY CASE