Hi th1996,
You write that you don’t manage to practice less than 5 mins SBP, 10 mins DM and 5 mins of samyama, because you feel you are addicted to the ecstasy. And that you sometimes even do things that are not AYP in order to increase the energy, presumably to trigger more ecstasy.
I think this might be a common situation (see Yogani’s quotes below), especially if ecstasy develops earlier than inner silence, something I’m familiar with. So while AYP is designed for people that are able to self-pace, there might be stretches on the path were this is particularly difficult because of one’s infatuation with ecstasy or other scenery. In my case, I treat this infatuation as a temporary phase, and I trust that once more stillness is present, and with it more non-attachment and equanimity, this will just evaporate. So you too can trust that this will pass over time, but it’s in your responsibility to make that time pass as smoothly as possible by self-pacing downward when you feel you should.
While the lessons often talk about stepping up and down in increments of 5 minutes, there is nothing wrong with changing SBP practice time in 1 minute steps, so there is no need to jump to zero if 5 mins are too much. You can just reduce to 3 mins and see how it goes for a few weeks. You should jump to zero mins SBP right away if the overload symptoms cause too much havoc in life (and if SBP is the most plausible culprit), and wait for some weeks till you feel ok again in daily life. Then you can step up again in 1 or 2 minute increments, and keeping SBP practice time fixed for a few weeks to test for stability.
I have been doing 3 mins SBP for the last 9 months, finding that this is stable for me (but on the edge), while still producing noticeable progress in the ecstatic conductivity department. Over these months I feel that the ecstasy has stabilized (less ups and downs), and I became less fascinated by and infatuated with it despite its slow continued rise. This might simply be a consequence of having less ups and downs, so that it has become easier to get used to its presence. So there was no need for me to reduce SBP to zero. But I removed all breath-suspension practices as they have turned out to be the strongest overload trigger for me (even just a single chin pump breath is too much). I also replaced for a while parts of these 3 mins of SBP with alternate nostril breathing. If you do something similar, you could keep your time of 5 mins fixed and still self-pace downwards by e.g. doing 2 min alternate nostril breathing followed by 3 mins SBP.
Have you tried out the public AI chat? I asked it “What should I do when I’m addicted to the ecstasy arising from my AYP practice?”
And it suggested many useful tips. These two lessons came up in the reply:
From lesson 113.1:
The ecstasy […] will gradually morph into a more expanded and less localized experience. So, while there may be that tendency to be “addicted” to the personal ecstasy, it will move beyond the personal over time, and be expressing more as an expansion of abiding inner silence and rising unity throughout life in general.
From lesson 258:
[Y]ou need to be sure your ecstatic “addiction” is not disrupting your deep meditation and samyama. Also, engaging in the world according to your tendency to help others is good. All of that will aid in the evolution of your ecstatic states to a higher manifestation. If you feel you are off balance in your practices, then ease off the ecstasy-producing ones and favor deep meditation more for a while, until you can bring your practices into balance. This is “self-pacing,” which you have no doubt seen discussed in the lessons. Getting carried away with ecstatic states is one of the signals to begin applying self-pacing. Uncomfortable energy excesses are another signal.
