This is the second extremely physically intense A&P-like experience I’ve had in a month and a half. Both happened after a much larger than normal amount of meditation. In the first case, I had done 14 hours of noting over two days of driving, and in last night's case, I had done about 3 hours of noting/driving, a couple half-hour sessions of concentration work, and three one-hour meditations a day prior.
I've got some questions below. Can anyone shed any light on any of this?
Here are the notes from my journal:
On the bed in the evening. Started with counting breaths to 100. Once I got to 100, I simply watched the breath for a while, then started noting. I don’t remember too much, except for a number of itches, and that my breath became pretty noticeable for a short while. Before I knew it, I was feeling pretty calm, and things started getting a bit hazy, dreamy, foggy. I remember trying to note, and then later realizing that I’d been drifting. I’d try again, and again, I’d realize I’d been drifting along. This went on for quite a while. So far, so good -- nothing unusual.
Out of nowhere, I felt this sudden body sensation surge, almost like the rush of acceleration in a really fast car. It lasted about two or three seconds, and at the end of it, there was this huge soundless explosion of brightness. I ended up completely awake, my thinking was pretty active, my heart rate was up a bit, I was feeling some excitement and energy, and I had this diffuse bliss and tingling all through my body. After a short bit, my heart rate settled down, but the sense of energy, excitement, and the visual brightness lasted a good long time.
I had a hard time noting silently, and ended up in thought. I tried to note out loud, but I still ended up in thought. I kept waiting for the tingling and energy to subside and to get the come-down and coolness I’ve felt when entering Dissolution, and I also looked for any rough-feeling vibrations like I’ve had in Dark Night, but none of these happened. I basically stayed in this energetic, tingly, floating state with a lot of brightness and little body sensation.
Once I calmed down some, I realized that I had a really hard time feeling the boundaries of my body. It sort of felt almost like I was floating in a pool of water that was the exact temperature of my body -- it was hard to tell where my body ended and the water started. I could feel my chest and abdomen a little bit more because of breathing, but it was faint. I also could hear people moving around in the house, but these sounds didn't bring me out of this state.
After a long while, I started getting cold shivers and lots of yawning, but this didn’t lead to anything other than feeling cold. Eventually, I stopped meditating and got up off the bed, and saw that I had meditated almost two hours.
Of course, I felt so energized, I couldn't get to sleep afterward. In fact, it took me almost six hours before I could sleep, and even now, twenty-four hours later, I can still feel some of that energy.
When I think about it, the experience seemed to divide up into three parts:
- The pretty normal breath watching and then noting part.
- The "rush" and soundless explosion and then the huge amount of excitement, energy, bliss, tingling part.
- Finally, the strange "can't really feel my body and feel like I'm floating" part.
Part 1 seems like a standard sort of thing for me, where I end up in Equanimity fairly easily, and then sort of drift in and out of clarity.
Next, Part 2, taken by itself, looks very much like an A&P experience, but I'm curious about it because it follows being in Equanimity, and because it never seemed to go anywhere.
And finally, Part 3 felt almost like some sort of jhana state, but I've never experienced that before.
Any ideas anyone?