tarin greco:
ok, a few questions:
- did you note an utter safety/security, or the absence of any threat or harm?
Not sure how to answer this. I don't know what this would refer to in normal experience (I observe nothing right now that corresponds to my understanding of those things or that corresponds to my understanding of the lack of those things), so I'm not sure what aspect of experience you're pointing to.
It's reasonable to say that I had no worries about whether anything bad would happen, even when thoughts about negative outcomes crossed my mind. (The thoughts were not negative, just practical reflections about things that might happen.)
I didn't have the sense of being protected, guarded, watched over as if by an angel, or wrapped up in the arms of a protector or protecting agency, or anything along those lines.
tarin greco:
- did you note a softness/a subtlety/a sensitivity/an intimacy in the experience? if so, was the intimacy a matter of being very, very close, or of an utter immediacy - was it partial or total?
"Softness" is a good way to characterize a quality of the experience. In EEs I've had I notice that there is the beginning of this; in the experience I'm describing there was drastically more. I don't know how to quantify it.
"Intimacy" is not a word I would normally use in this way, so I'll guess at what you mean and try to match up our terms. Normally, experience presents as if one part is some number of steps removed from another part; one part of my experience (some kind of executive / noticing function) appears to consider, reflect on, and regard other parts (sensory experience) as if from a distance, the magnitude of the distance being related somehow (I see now) to the intensity and magnitude of body vibrations. In the experience I described, this presentation of experience (parts separated from each other) was completely absent, as far as I can tell. Is that what you mean by intimacy?
"As far as I can tell" doesn't mean I say this perception of separation was completely absent, it means I don't put 100% confidence in my own discernment, but as far as I can discern, it was completely absent.
tarin greco:
- what, if anything, did you note about the past/present/future, or the passage of time?
Time didn't present as if it "passes," experience presented as if it was happening "now" with no segmentation into this passing moment / this arriving moment / past / future / other ways that I often think about time, as far as I can discern. Practical cognition about time ("this happened before that...this will happen in the future...") was completely unaffected.
Trying to recollect my experience, I don't think that the perception of time or of some feature of time was central to it. I didn't make any mental notes related to it, either because it didn't occur to me to or because I thought other aspects were more significant.
tarin greco:
- what, in your experience here and now, if anything, is most reminiscient of the experience (as you recall it)? how do 'you', as an identity (a feeling being), relate to its recall?
1) The thing most reminiscent of my experience is the sound of the music I was listening to (which I happen to be listening to now). What made the experience remarkable was that sensory experience itself appeared to be seen clearly, and it was that very fact which made it good. Right now, it seems to be the very same sensory experience presenting itself, albeit without clarity.
2) At this point, there is some kind of distortion of my memory and ability to conceptualize what the experience was about. I recognized that that was happening which is why I wrote my experience down at the time; now the sense that the experience was some kind of alien, incomprehensible thing is much stronger.
When I re-read what I wrote, a kind of disbelief arises, because I can't help but conceptualize the experience in terms of affect. I think, "obviously something must have been affectively enjoyable about it; why else would I go on about how great it was?" and I then imagine various affective things that seem reasonable to think may have occurred during it. On the other hand, I do recognize that *at the time* I was very certain that this was not the case and made a mental point of not forgetting that verbal claim because I thought it was important.
Other ways I relate to it...whether it was affective or not, I want to re-experience it, both to figure it out and because I remember it was very very good. There is an annoyance when I recognize that my experience is no longer like that and is instead tired / moody. I'm very annoyed that, as it ended and I entered what was clearly a form of EE that I previously had experience with, I didn't keep up the mindfulness and either extend the EE or try to return to the previous experience to get another glimpse. (At the time I decided I needed to do some "integration" but in retrospect I think this was a bad call on my part.)
Another way I relate to it...when I look at bodily vibrations in my experience now, there is a kind of perplexity about how their presence could be responsible for not being in that state and their apparent absence be the cause of that state, as (when I was in that state) it did seem that it was vibrations, as some kind of "perception of internal movement", that were the very things that had previously stood in the way of that experience. (Not sure I can explain that further at the moment.)
tarin greco:
- how are you experiencing this moment of being alive?
Tired, confused, interested.
Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about this. I should let you know that my familiarity with AF terms is extremely rudimentary, and so many questions you may ask me are questions I may not be able to answer until I figure out the terminology you're using.