4am 45 minutes seated meditation. First noting, then anapanasati concentration practice. I switched to concentration practice because there was a lot of thinking and suffering; my mind was constantly telling gloomy micro-stories instead of paying bare attention to phenomena. The anapanasati was soothing.
9:30 pm Met with Ron Crouch over the phone. For 45 minutes we talked about the experience that Beth thinks is stream entry. He agrees with her. He said that when I experienced pleasure immediately upon sitting the next day, that was the 4th nana (Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away). He said that the pleasure and excitement of the 4th nana is intense when the nana is either the first thing experienced in a sitting (this happens only during Review stage A) or when it is the person's cutting edge (when they are in the 4th stage of a path); that it can be very subtle when it's passed through in the middle of a sitting. So the intense pleasure is strong evidence that on July 14 I was in review stage A. Ron also gave me 2 techniques for calling up a cessation. The first is Kenneth's method: roll the eyeballs back into the head, then back down, rapidly, with emphasis on the down. I tried this for a few seconds and it was powerful! (though didn't get to a cessation.) The second is Ron's self-discovered method: just bring to mind the mental state of pre-cessation. I immediately felt like I knew what he was talking about, even though I've had doubt about ever having experienced cessations at all.
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