| | First off, thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm brand new to the forum, and hope that my participation here will bear some fruit.
Some background:
I started meditating about a year and a half ago as a way to deal my anxiety issues. They had always been around, but had begun to flare up in the form of panic attacks. To keep it short, the meditation and mindfulness work has not yet cured the anxiety, but put a halt to panic attacks. I'm grateful for that. The form of meditation I've been doing is essentially all anapanasati, with metta thrown in on occaision.
There was a turning point in my practice about a year back. I had gotten fairly concentrated and switched my attention to a pleasant tingling sensation on my forehead. After focusing on it for a bit, it felt like it "zipped open" down the back of my head, and my whole body erupted in the most intense physical pleasure I've ever experienced. If I had to describe the sensation in any detail, I would say it was like an incredible number of tiny energy particles shooting straight up from each point of my body. I was very grateful for this experience, and ever since then, I've felt as if I ultimately cannot escape meditation and Buddhism. I've been able to dupicate the experience a few times since in kind, but have gotten nowhere close in terms of intensity.
The problem:
In the past several months, I've found that I'm barely able to bring myself to meditate. Each time I begin to get concentrated, a large lump of discomfort appears in the area immediately below my heart, stretching to where the abdomen meets the chest. It feels almost like something is caught, or there's some kind of energy blockage. When I examine it, I feel nauseous, and sometimes even find myself burping. It's quite unpleasant, very persistent, and always leaves me feeling kind of edgy when meditation is done.
I've tried ignoring it, but the discomfort becomes worse. I've tried applying less effort, and the lumpy, "blockage" feeling doesn't manifest, but the concentration feels hazy and rather useless. I've tried doing metta instead, but the feeling manifests anyway. (It appears to be a function of concentration.) Most interestingly, when I've tried examining it really deeply, with as much concentration as I can muster, I find a sort of physically painful and vaguely frightening center. I can watch this center for several minutes, but the result is that I come out of meditation suddenly, often with a gasp of fear.
Concurrently, my practice has largely fallen apart. When I think about sitting, it brings up feelings of futility, a vague sense that no technique is satisfactory, any pleasant experience I could have would be temporary, and any insight I acquire is just a perception, and therefore not completely certain. I feel stuck, but again, somehow compelled to meditate.
Well, there you have it. I don't really have a teacher to take this to, so I'm posting it here for the consideration of meditators more experienced than I. Again, thanks for reading. |