It is time to get back to describing Dissolution. As the stage of the Arising and Passing Away ends, the meditator may be left feeling raw and incompetent despite the fact that they are continuing to make valuable progress into deeper and deeper levels of profound insight.
This feeling that something is wrong when things are actually getting better and better can cause all sorts of problems during the Dark Night, especially to those not familiar with the standard maps.
On the other hand, having come through the A&P territory can be quite a relief, and so sometimes Dissolution can seem quite welcome.
Some will stop practicing here, as they feel they have “released the 189
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Kundalini” and so are done for the time being. Dissolution feels like a very natural place to stop practicing, the only problem being that the later stages (Fear and the rest) tend to follow it soon enough even if one stops, though less intense practice leads to a less intense, if often prolonged, Dark Night.
However, those who wish to keep doing formal practice may find Dissolution frustrating. Whereas just one stage ago they could sit for hours and perceive the finest vibrations of reality in exquisite detail, now reality appears to be slipping away, vague, and hard to get a handle on.
Whereas we may have had stellar posture in the previous stage, now we go back to being ordinary mortals. Images of the body may even seem to completely disappear, similar to that which happens in formless realms but without the clarity.
Practice is likely to be more difficult, and we may experience pain from sitting that was basically completely absent during the previous stage. This can be extremely frustrating for those who don’t know that this is normal, and the desire to re-attain a fading past can greatly interfere with being present. In the face of these difficulties, I highly recommend noting practice. It may seem like a step back to some who abandoned it during the glory of the A&P, but the spiritual path is not a linear one. In the face of Dissolution and the stages that follow, noting practice can be very useful and powerful.
In short, if they are able to keep practicing (familiar theme yet?) and adjust to having to actually work to perceive things clearly again, they will begin to make further progress. This time the effort will have to be with a lighter and wider touch. Note well, if they give up in the stages of the Dark Night (or any time after the A&P Event), the qualities of the Dark Night will almost certainly continue to haunt them in their daily life, sapping their energy and motivation, and perhaps even causing feelings of unease, perhaps depression and even paranoia. Thus, the wise meditator is very, very highly encouraged to try to maintain their practice despite the potential difficulties so as to avoid getting stuck in these stages!
I think of Dissolution as the couch potato stage, though it can also have a sense of sensual languor to it. A hallmark of Dissolution is that it is suddenly hard to avoid getting lost in thought and fantasy when 190
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meditating. We may feel somehow disconnected from our life. Another effect that can be very noticeable at this stage is that actions just don’t happen easily. For instance, you might be going to lift your hand to turn off your alarm clock, but your hand just doesn’t move. You could move your hand, but somehow things just tend to stop with the intention and get nowhere. Eventually you move your hand, but it might have been just a bit tiring to do so. That’s what Dissolution can feel like.
Meditation can be the same way, and until one breaks out of this, things can get a bit mired down in the overstuffed cushions of Dissolution.
However, when the perception of things ending becomes clearer again, there arises...
6. FEAR
The clarity and intensity begin to return, but now this stage can involve all sorts of frightening distortions of perception when sitting, accompanied by great feelings of unease, paranoia, fearfulness, and/or
“the willies.” It can even sometimes seem that our body is falling in tatters through the floor or that we are rotting away. If we have strong concentration tendencies, we may see horrifying or disconcerting visions. Vibrations from here on out should no longer change frequency with the phase of the breath as they did in stage 4 and for the next few stages tend to be slower than those in that previous stage.
Strangely, Fear can also be a just a bit rapturous in the ways that a horror movie can be or in the way that riding a roller coaster at night can be simultaneously scary and exciting. However, the nice side of this stage tends to be greatly overshadowed by the dark side. We are being asked to accept the full range of life here as it is. Acceptance and clear, precise awareness of the true nature of the actual sensations that make up all of this are the key in all of the Dark Night stages as before. On the mild side, this stage might manifest as just a slightly heightened sense of non-specific anxiety. As fear passes and our reality continues to strobe in and out and fall away, we are left feeling...
7. MISERY
This stage can be characterized by great feelings of sadness and loss.
Again, there can almost be something nice about the heartfelt depth of these feelings, but this tends to be greatly overshadowed by the dark side 191
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of them. We are having our whole concept of self and the world as being permanent, able to satisfy, and even being us or separate from us being torn down and violated by the now undeniable truth of the Three Characteristics. There can be a lot of grieving in this process.
This is hard to accept, and our resistance to this process causes us misery. Becoming lost in the content of these sensations and being unable to see their true nature is a somewhat common cause of failure to progress and failure to live healthily. On the mild side, we may just feel a bit like after we do after we have been crying. Misery is the transition point between the Drum-like 5-8Hz part of the Dark Night and the very complex, irritating frequencies that follow. Attention continues to get wider and the center more blind. As things continue to fall apart, clearly demonstrate their unsatisfactoriness and their selflessness, this can cause...
8. DISGUST
We become disgusted with the whole thing. This is where the buzzy 10-18+ Hz chaotic vibrations around the periphery really begin to get strong. Through this section of the Dark Night, our ability to see objects in the center of our attention is poor, and it may feel like our minds are being stretched wide and yet contracting at the same time. We begin to feel completely tormented by our noisy and repetitious minds (a classic sign of this stage), by a body that is full of suffering and unpleasant sensations, and by a world that is falling apart. Perceiving thoughts as thoughts gets harder and harder, and thus getting caught by our stuff gets increasingly easier. On the mild side, one might just feel subtly revolted and disappointed with reality in general, or perhaps have the slightly creepy feeling of crawling skin. On the strong side, we see nothing to cling to, no self to be found, and we begin to wish the whole edgy thing would just end, also called...