hello all! I've just joined here, hoping to get some advice...
I've been meditating for several years now. I've been through the dukkha nanas at the end of 2010, following a long, glorious, spell in jhanic land with all its whistles & bells, so I even thought I had control over dukkha. But suddenly the.horrors of the dukkha nanas came like a hurricane. As there was nothing I could do but allow it to be, I accepted it and after about 4 months things start to shift and peace arised in the mind.
I've done a lot of retrets last year, and I could even say I become an almost full-time Dhamma practiioner. I was trying hard to get anywhere, it just happened that Dhamma became central to my life.
In August last year my mind dropped into an amazing, luminous place ( which I'm not sure which of the arupa jhanas could be, if any), soon followed by a blackness of nothing, which I can't identify it either. My experience of the aupa jhanas is hit and miss, as you may have guessed. The rupa jhanas are more easily accessed though metta practice.
But now I'm back in Re-observation, and it took me awhile to realise that..Everything became painful, the thoughts hurt the mind as if a sharp metal is scratching a mirror..everything that enters the sensery field, pleasant or unplesant, feels stressful, loud and noisy. The first thing that I notice ( I thought it was real) it was a smell of burning and rotten meat or something like that, I can't even describe the smell as it is so weird.. I kept searching for the soure of that smell, untill I realised it didn't come from anywhere but my mind.
I have moments of peace in between the chaos, it feels as if all the thoughts are crammed together scratching each other..The body vibrates, sometimes I feel as if my ears have been impaled by a rotary drill..It so difficult to concentrate sometimes but I'try to receive it as it is, I believe, nature doing its work.
I hope someone can enlighten me on how to proceed from now on...How many times do we have to go through the dukkha nanas?
Also I want to ask about something I experienced only three times. You know when the body vanishes into champagne bubbles, and everything becomes like a pointist painting, only dancing dots..
The first time the experience was more related to the body, but the next time everything, absolutely everything, including sense of self watching it, fizzed like an alka seltzer tablet. This may not be any great insight but it changed the way I see things completely.
Please any advice, very welcome..
hello Daniel, are yout there? I'm sending you lots of metta ❤
