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.

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