Insights runs are when you purposefully cycle through the stages of insight (see image above) leading to cessation, while tracking very subtle micro-phenomenological changes in experience. This practice can be done for many reasons including:
Learning about your mind’s general tendencies.
Gaining greater mastery of your attention in precise detail.
Predicting and increasing the likelihood of cessations occurring.
Deepening insight into the 3 characteristics and the nature of phenomenal reality.
Understanding the micro to understand the macro cycles of your life, and to recognise where you and others are within these processions.
Strengthening baseline equanimity despite changes in the stages.
Throughout practice and life, we will naturally go through the stages of insight and I think of this happening at different scales - micro, meso, macro, individual, collective, micro-micro etc. - lasting varying lengths of time, to different proportions. Each stage (or vipassanā-ñāṇa) has its own characteristics and we go through them whether we’re cognisant of it or not. Though becoming aware of them, live, in real time, helps us better work through and learn what unique perspectives and lessons they can provide. Insight runs can drastically help with this.
As mentioned, for the purpose of insight runs, we’re specifically interested in tracing the changes of these stages at the micro-phenomenological level. This is about noticing subtle changes in the quality of attention within one meditation sit; as opposed to proceeding through the stages on a macro level which may take place over weeks, or months, or years even.* Instead, we’re talking about passing through the stages at a rate of anywhere from one hour to even only ten minutes per cycle.
*So no one is confused, insights runs - going through the stages within one sitting - are not done so as to bypass the macro-cycles. Those are still lived out and so this shouldn’t be considered a way of short-cutting the dark night (dukkha ñāṇas), for example. In fact, with enough experience, we can learn to appreciate the dark night for how, in its own way, enriches our life and is part of the process of growth and learning. As I say, the sine wave is always oscillating, such is reality, but can you be accepting and equanimous wherever you find yourself in its arcs, and not just always waiting for a peak?
Prerequisites
Insights runs are not for most people. First things first, you have to be micro-phenomenologically inclined on the second to second level. Secondly, you’ll need sufficient general metacognition so as to not keep getting pulled in to the content the mind presents at each stage, so you can keep a ‘wider’ perspective on things. You’ll also need decent concentration to be able to stay on task, keep track of where you’re at in the cycle and what’s already transpired in the meditation without getting lost and forgetting. Also in order for you to be able to access all the stages at the micro-phenomenological level within a sit, you will have had to have already passed through them on a macro-level at least once (though this still doesn’t guarantee that each stage will occur every sit).
So with all this mentioned, that means to attempt insight runs you need to at least have stream entry (1st path) - but even then depending on people’s general tendencies of mind and differing phenomenological abilities, I can see stream entry alone not being adequate for this practice. Regardless, if you’re interested, give the following instructions a go and you’ll find out if you are able to do it or at least see potential to do it with enough practice!
Instructions
I have a guided meditation (linked above) which aids practitioners in the general approach to doing insights runs. But to spell it out in writing, essentially we want to be tracking some key qualities of the experiential field and how it changes organically throughout the meditation. These qualities are:
Phenomenal Clarity (how sharp/defined vs fuzzy phenomena are)
Gestalt Dynamics (how collected, scattered, still, volatile, harmonious, complex or simple the experience is).
Focused Attention vs Peripheral Awareness (how the two relate or play up/down at different times).
The Energy Parameter (how awake, aroused, dim, vibrant, energised consciousness is)
Tonal Affect and General Disposition (what emotions can be detected or what judgements are coming up either in response to your meditation object or general attitude of the meditation or even just to Being itself).
These are the main parameter changes I look for, though at 4th path there is no longer a fundamental, existential affect that is changing and no subject/object relationship changes; though otherwise those and the above listed are prominent qualities which show themselves differently in each stage, and so are worth learning to track to know where in the cycle you are. Again, to do this exercise, we observe very subtle fluxes in these corresponding categories to the second/minute.
So the idea would be to sit down and observe how these qualities change themselves until a cessation occurs and then you can repeat the process. While doing this it helps to keep the mind generally anchored to a meditation object, this acts as the ‘control’ variable, which provides you a somewhat stable reference for comparing everything else changing. This meditation object can be absolutely anything, but if you’re advanced enough it can just be attention itself. Or if your mind is powerful enough you can simply set the intention: ‘to track the stages of insight leading to cessation’ and this will be sufficient - though I recommend being more deliberate about tracking these changes to start off.
Getting a feel for each stage and clear understanding of what they’re like requires doing a lot of insight runs. Over time and many rounds, you will notice patterns. For example, maybe very often five minutes into sitting your vision goes blurry and a weird pressure starts forming on either side of your ears. Then at 7 minutes your attention will flicker and shoot from object to object for a bit. Then quite reliably the body map dissolves around the 10 minute mark. These are all signs of progressing through the stages.
Eventually, when you’ve subjectively mapped the stages pretty well and can reliably cycle through them, you may even learn to extend the duration of a particular stage, or heighten its intensity or jump back and forth between stages. You can arrive at equanimity have a cessation, break out into more equanimity and go for another cessation (rinse and repeat) without having to traverse through the dukkha ñāṇas again. Having this level of understanding and control of such subtitles in your mind is a funky ability to say the least!
Scepticism Warranted
Now I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the epistemic issues with the stages of insight. The big one being priming. Without an elaborate test of hundreds of subjects, I don’t actually see an easy way to falsify the claim that we experience the stages of insight because we have been primed, or predisposed, to see them due to social influence, rather than the stages objectively occurring in this way and in this sequence as a more culturally, context-independent feature of (human) minds. Humans are notoriously bias and just from knowing a little about the stages beforehand, we may unfittingly, subconsciously force ourselves to pattern-match our experience into a provided model. In fact, this definitely occurs a lot of the time; but how much of the time and to what extent does it also not occur?
I raised this contention with a professor who is researching the stages of insight and he seemed to not worry about it - though had had similar thoughts - which made me think in the end it might not even matter all that much. From a pragmatism point of view, the priming isn’t an issue until it is. But it’s always worth taking these models with a pinch of salt and never clinging too tightly to them, which luckily enough is precisely what meditation does for us anyway.
With all that said and acknowledged, I still find great value in the stages of insight map and do believe there is something to it - so give it spin!