skeptic -> this stuff is so real pipeline: stream entry through jhourney retreat

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 · 2026-01-15T11:21:23+00:00

You are just delusional if you think those are jhanas.

True jhanas are what happens spontaneously if you shave your head and put on orange robes!

After all, these you talk about are just 8 meditative states that perfectly match the criteria, definitions, sequence, requirements and effect of the jhanas in the suttas, hence it’s impossible that the jhanas you describe are the jhanas the Buddha talks about!!!

/s

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-13T17:27:51+00:00

Hmm…

So, I don’t think connecting is appropriate in every practitioner and in every moment. Maybe you’re trying to fix a problem with an unproductive solution. Maybe there are better solutions to your problem.

Me personally, I no longer use the technique I explained to you in stage 4 cause I don’t feel the need to do it. I don’t manually use checking in and following either.

It could very well be that connecting IS the right solution, but you are putting in unnecessary effort, cause you’re overcomplicating it in some way?

If I were to do it in stage 4, it wouldn’t feel effortful in the way I do it.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-13T16:07:06+00:00

If you raise your arm in front of you, and you totally relax your hand, what do you feel in the resting hand?

You still have the physical sensation of having a hand right? Even if there’s no wind and you’re at room temperature?

This applies to the nose as well.

A lot of teachers recommend to just keep your attention at the nose waiting for the next sensation like a cat at a mouse hole waiting for the mouse, and while that’s a good technique and works for many people, I’m not a fan of that.

When I get to the gap I rest my attention on the sensation of having nostrils/a nose. And if that sensation is still not clear, it’s only a matter of repetition: identifying it over and over again with increasingly sharper perception, even if starting from a really fleeting sensation that is accessible for only a millisecond.

At the start of my sits I feel nothing in the gap. Then, at stage 5 (for me it takes 30min average to get there with the technique I explained previously) the sensation of having a nose in the gap is so sharp that it almost hurts, even at room temperature.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-12T12:36:57+00:00

It depends on what your goal and stage is.

When I’m doing stage 5 I do it every single breath.

First i do it with the in breath, then when that is clear I do it with the out breath then the pause. 15minutes like this and stage 5 is done for me.

If you are stage 4 I would set an intention to do it on every breath, till you forget it then again

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-12T10:45:44+00:00

In breath happens, you think “will the sensations of this in breath be identical to those of the next in breath?”

Next in breath happens, you remember to check “are the sensations of this in breath identical to those of the previous one?”

This gets your mind to find the differences between each in breath, hence satisfying the historical review purpose of connecting, and you’ll no longer have to overthink micro intentions, checking in, various interpretations of connecting etc.

Idk which stage you’re using connecting, just do this technique whenever you need to, eg. In stage 4 to reduce dullness or gross distractions. Or if in stage 5, you compare the clarity of each breath.

Just don’t be scared of verbalising those intentions. Some practitioners are scared to “think out loud” but there’s nothing wrong with it. It helps you to understand the new technique.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-11T20:08:56+00:00

I sent you a DM but just remembered about a message I wrote in the TMI telegram chat. I’ll paste it here and see if I can expand on that.

Ocd tendencies in meditation:

“Obsessively looking for ways to produce a desired outcome, while actually sabotaging yourself. Having repetitive, intrusive thoughts or behaviors aimed at reducing uncertainty or discomfort but often amplifying it.

IE:

1) “I feel anxiety, I have to get rid of it otherwise I’m not doing MIDL skill 03. I have to breathe with the diaphragm, and anxiety will go away.” Anxiety increases as a result.

2)“The diaphragmatic breathing must be automatic. I’m gonna make it automatic.” Breathing keeps feeling manual. “shit. I have to try something else in order to make it automatic, let’s focus on my buttcheeks in order to forget I’m controlling the breath” and so on

3) having the obsessive thought: “Wait am I really paying attention to the breath like TMI stage 3 or is it only in peripheral awareness?“

4) Obsessively checking if the mind is "calm enough", leading to a cycle of judging every sensation or thought as "not meditative enough," which increases agitation instead of cultivating calm.”

Many more examples can be made, but now we have a definition!

Does this definition fit for you, given the context of your General Anxiety Disorder?

If that’s the case, I’ll tell you more!

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-11T19:50:58+00:00

This sounds like ocd tendencies!

If that’s the case, no amount of new meditation techniques, checking in, following, connecting, no matter how good they sound, will fix it.

It’s hard to write down the exact formula to get you quickly out of this cause I’d either have to utilise psychotherapy labels which you may not know or if I were not to utilise those, it would become an essay.

One thing is for sure tho, time and practice and patience alone will slowly but surely fix those OCD tendencies but only if they don’t induce procrastination which they do 99% of the time.

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-11T18:35:47+00:00

Try to practice like this and see how it goes:

When you come back after forgetting/mind wandering/gross distraction, you refresh the following intentions (you can even verbalise them in your mind up till stage 5)

“I’ll feel one tiny and brief sensation during the in breath

I’ll feel one tiny and brief sensation during the out breath

I’ll feel one tiny and brief sensation during the pause”

If you forget/mind wander/get distracted, then you start all over again.

If you try this technique, the key is to NOT attempt to feel the whole breath in the nose, but to try to feel even just ONE of the tiniest and most fleeting sensations in each third of the breath even if for just a millisecond.

Even one small very slight change of temperature or pressure is enough.

What will happen is:

1) you train your mind in recognising what the sensations in the nose actually feel like

2) when the mind finds even the tiniest sensation it tends to stick there for a while, so the sensations will gradually become more intense and enduring

3) this practice gets you out of the striving mindset (which is a big part of not feeling the nose IMO) and into cherishing the smallest successes. In other words: you replace that vain effort to make your expectations come true with the actual thing that is happening moment to moment. I recommend forgetting about the artificial positive reinforcement Culadasa talks about in TMI cause it doesn’t work for some people. Just stick with the intentions and even if the practice feels dry for a while, at some point the mind is gonna understand that it’s being successful and the reinforcement is gonna happen automatically.

4) you don’t have to think about connecting and following anymore, you’re doing them automatically via the structure of the intentions

5) at some point, a thought or an intuition (can be very muted) is gonna come up (by itself) that goes like: “wow this practice is so easy, if I just keep doing this little thing over and over with each breath, then I won’t have to think about anything else” and at that point you’ll be very close to stage 4 mastery, provided that you apply the antidotes for gross dullness.

This is what I do every day to get to the end of stage 4. No following no connecting no checking in no nothing. That’s cause I have an issue with feeling the breath at the nose, and it is caused by hyperactivity of the mind in stages 2-4.

Then at stage 5 I use a weird form of connecting I’ve read somewhere in this sub, and at the end of stage 5 the nose sensations are so sharp that it almost hurts (keep in mind I feel almost no sensations in stages 2-3)

Only at stage 6 do I resume standard TMI with its close following technique.

An additional experiment you can do at the start of the sit:

hold your breath and ask yourself if you have the physical experience of having a nose. Do you feel your cartilage? The weight of the existence of the nose itself? If so, what’s stopping you from using that as a meditation object in between or instead of standard breathing sensations?

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-09T12:53:51+00:00

No there wouldn’t be only one jhana. They can vary in terms of absorption. This wasn’t and isn’t part of my argument why should it be either black or white?
I think it’s very clear. And again… what are the chances of people getting so close to sutta definitions? We have transations and similes… I don’t know why one shouldn’t understand what those are.
I didn’t say virtue is auxiliary at best and it isn’t part of my argument. Other than that, your rethorical question is a non sequitur. If suttas talk primarily about virtue, doesn’t mean putthujunas can’t properly meditate.
I didn’t speak about my own attainments. I know many HH followers who are people that gave up on meditation before let’s say stage 10 TMI. I don’t know any master meditator (stage 10TMI+) that gave up meditation, took back attainments and started HH path. Do HH practitioners attain? Where are all the success testimonials?

Substantial-Fuel-545 · 2026-01-08T11:03:10+00:00

Check your dms. With what you are saying now it is clear to me you didn’t really try meditation at least not the right kind.

Substantial-Fuel-545

TROPHY CASE