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Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?

Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
equanimity anxiety dark night re-observation mental breakdowns waves migraine auras
Answer
8/4/13 6:54 PM
Hey, guys. I’m new and wanted to come into this forum more gradually, but I find I need some triage. Incredibly, I just lost a post I spent hours writing while trying to fend off “wave” vibrations that have me, um, starting to freak the hell out, frankly. I can barely see to type, for example. Basically, I’m now going to have to cut and paste a clumsier background and skip some things for now, including a description of an OOB experience I had around age 18. Apologies, but triage is triage. I’ll backfill later—if I survive, heh heh.

I started meditating and identifying myself as a Buddhist only 2 years ago (after 25 years as an atheist existentialist) in an effort to cope with pervasive fear and an odd sensitivity to the edginess surrounding pleasures that I felt I just "flitted" to and from. I experienced raptures and fireworks lights (like shards of mirrors) after only my first sit or three, and after only 10 minutes. I seem to have a low threshold for crossing over into altered states and seeing everything as not solid. It hasn't always been convenient.

My immediate concern is that I’ve stumbled into vipassana territory I am not ready for or practiced nearly enough to push up through precisely to higher stages. I’m worried I’m risking a meltdown. Yet I feel trapped, like I can’t go back now and simply dwell in samatha. I wasn’t carelessly disregarding my medical history; this just happened. I’m sure now that I’ve been DN cycling most of my life. I want peace.

Briefly, I have a history of anxiety/depression (no episode since 1999, though) and, more disturbing and impactful to my life, vivid complex migraine auras that often include full-blown hallucinations, panic states, and neurological deficits that amount to loss of all but the strangely surviving and struggling-to-survive Observer. This is a rare but well-documented form of migraine diagnosed at UNC Hospitals back in the late eighties. My son has a version that is milder on the aura side, but heavier on the headache side, not really complex but classic textbook. I only rarely get actual headache, which is why diagnosis was so difficult back in the day. It used to be known as basilar-artery migraine and hemiplegic migraine, which are poorly sorted diagnostically. Most just say “complicated migraine variant.”

I'm sure I crossed the A&P (again) last weekend and have been experiencing irritation/fear states (along with vibratory and "boiling" vision all this past workweek). I had a short Misery thing Tuesday at work, though nothing in my life was making me miserable. As best I can make out, I entered Reobservation Thursday or Friday, if not earlier.

Yesterday afternoon, at a coffeehouse, things shifted. The fine, irritating, furious vibes (mainly visual) suddenly morphed into much bigger “macro” waves of undulating distortions, like fabric on a slow but crazy breeze. Very LSD. They, like the finer layer of vibrations, never stop, even in my nighttime dreams, which remain ridiculously lucid and suddenly a bit powers-y (last night I was making other people do things in my dreams, just for perverse fun). These big waves are even more obtrusive off the cushion than the irritation vibrations were, making me barely able to read as I sit here and queasy as if seasick. I want them to frigging stop! I’m now experiencing some anxiety spikes because I can’t control them and need to get some work done for my new job! Everything is “breathing,” but in distorted, house-of-mirrors ways I’m emphatically not enjoying.

Triage suggestions anyone? Or will I have to resort to lorazepam, rolling up the mat, and hanging on for dear life and sanity? I thought the waves meant I had hit EQ, so I meditated last night diligently, but this doesn’t feel nice or even neutral. I don’t even want to be conscious for this, let alone practice. What should I do? And is there hope I can hit a nicer version of something soon?

HISTORY OF MIGRAINE AND PROLONGED NEUROLOGICAL DEFICITS

I had my first altered experience of consciousness at age 12, in an overheated crowded church while singing a hymn and staring at the cross above the altar. I suddenly experienced a "rain" of bright sparkling white lights, altered sound (everyone sounded plunged under bass-booming water), loss of perception of body fields, profound numbness, loss of speech, a plunge into slow-mo, and more (ie, less sense of even being there). This event was later diagnosed as complex migraine aura. My family has always joked that it was a religious experience. Now I wonder.

I'm 49 now and have sometimes been disabled for months with these migraine attacks (though less so since the last bad one in 2007). I would experience radically altered states of consciousness that are difficult to convey but not at all subtle in experience. These involved shimmering lights (common migraine fortification spectra), total blindness in the center of vision only, distorted or absent body fields, profound numbness, left-sided paralysis, slurred speech, loss of the ability to think in or understand language, uncontrollable twitching and body movements, and so on. These attacks usually began with a visceral fear state (terror, really) that suddenly arose from my gut into my mouth. It was much the way you feel when an elevator drops too rapidly and your heart is in your mouth.

I had the last big one of these during a vacation in the Smoky Mountains in 2007. I had been well for a long time. Suddenly, a particularly bad attack came on, proceeded by extreme vertigo (I lay down on the floor for stability, but the room was spinning). It went on for hours. At its worst, I was screaming because I was "experiencing" utter annihilation. I was yelling to my husband, "I'm disappearing! I'm disappearing! I'll never come back!" Just real terror like you can't imagine--the observer was there only to witness the impending destruction of even itself. All sense of body and most of mind were turning off. I was struggling at all costs to maintain a self.

I was eventually diagnosed but not before suffering extremely for decades and often feeling I was literally losing my frigging mind. In fact I suffered 3 nervous breakdowns because of the poorly controlled migraine condition and was then also diagnosed with severe agitated MDD. Phobias emerged also around travel, because of the migraine disease.

OTHER HISTORY STUFF YOU SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW

At age 19, trauma induced two weeks of hallucinations. I witnessed my mother have a seizure and turn blue and stop breathing. I “saved” her when I bolted up out of sleep after hearing her fall. When we returned from the hospital, I was drawing a bath and went through a white light tunnel, thinking, “Oh, a migraine.” When I emerged, for a couple of weeks, everything I looked at that was organic died and rotted to nothing before my eyes: fruit, people, whatever. Music was broken down into its individual notes, and was painful to listen to, as if each chord was a tactile lashing. The music sounded discordant. It was the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced and not easily forgotten. I was rational, too, and knew that I was "just seeing things" and "just hearing things." But I couldn't stop it, until I went in for hypnotherapy, finally got to sleep again, woke up, and it had all just completely stopped. This happened 30 years ago, and it still haunts me.

I also around the same time experienced leaving my body/viewpoint, as if a mirror flipped into outer space and I was seeing myself and a friend from the other side. It was rapturous and time was passing. I felt like I could keep going and never “come back.” I remembered my loved ones, though, contracted, and flipped back into my body state and POV.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 5:39 PM as a reply to _.
Understand that random Buddhist people on a forum are not going to be able to prevent your disorders from happening and you will have to go to doctors or psychiatrists to get clinical help (which you seem to have done so already). What many of us won't know is if vipassana (especially if you are practising it badly) will add to your migraines or not. What if you have migraines and you blame the meditation but it was just your condition? You can definitely just stop meditating altogether and that will really slow down insight.

So do you see what I mean? Look at your post and think of a normal meditation practitioner (including an advanced one) trying to parse out what is your biological/mental problems and what is meditation related. How would we know if you really did go through reobservation when it was something else? I would talk to a psychiatrist and ask him/her if meditation is okay for you because how would any of us here know without being your doctor? Most meditators on this board have anxiety/phobias/mild depression. For many they had to meditate to quite an advanced level to be even able to deal with depression permanently. They also had to take medication while meditating.

Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear. If anyone else knows how to answer this post better than me please do so!

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 5:50 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
Richard Zen:
I would talk to a psychiatrist and ask him/her if meditation is okay for you because how would any of us here know without being your doctor?


Without that psychiatrist being a meditator himself/herself, how would he/she know if meditation would help this lady with her condition?

FWIW, I used to have migraines myself as a child and they have gone away. Meditation did the trick.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 6:48 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
A psychiatrist could in no way help me navigate tricky meditation territory, which is what I'm asking about. I'm under the continuous care of a board-certified neurologist for my migraines, thank you, and he happens to be board certified in psychiatry, too. Are you suggesting that I might get a helpful response from him if I call him up and tell him I'm seeing reality as distorted wave formations? Really??? Don't you think it more likely that I'll be admitted to a psych ward and shot full of thorazine and then lose my new job? Not too bloody helpful, I'd say.

Migraine isn't a psychiatric disorder, and I'm not currently suffering any degree of depression. So why in the world would I make an appointment to see a psych? I've never found much use for psychiatrists or psychologists even when it did come to garden-variety depression, which, as I say, I haven't suffered from since 1999. Samatha practice cured my phobias where nothing else helped at all.

I gave my background to show that I'm really in this territory and have a low threshold for wildness. I'm not asking you or anyone here to medicalize what is happening to me or to offer medical diagnosis/treatment. I'm asking for dharma-savy and compassionate suggestions on navigating this tough practice territory and diagnosing "where I am" on the maps (re-obs?). It isn't my "fault" I stumbled into this territory. I'm trying to make clear that I have a propensity to stumble into wild rides while simultaneously not being an experienced, precise meditator. I'm asking for dharma suggestions, particularly since it is hard for me to read books at the moment with everything undulating.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 6:46 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
So let me ask things this way:

1. Is it within the "normal" range for vipassana practitioners to see the fabric of reality (or whatev.) as undulating waves continuously, even off the cushion, such that it is difficult to even read or work? Or have none of you ever heard of this?

2. Since I'm finding this unpleasant, am I definitely not in any stage of EQ?

3. If I'm still in re-obs, does anyone know why I might have experienced a sudden shift yesterday out of fine-grained fast vibrations into this more globular, warping macro vision? (And this is almost wholly visual; auditorily, I'm still hearing a high, fast ringing, but it isn't too bothersome.)

Thanks.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 7:14 PM as a reply to _.
You should work on your throat chakra. You may try these simple exercises.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 8:19 PM as a reply to Change A..
Change A.:
Richard Zen:
I would talk to a psychiatrist and ask him/her if meditation is okay for you because how would any of us here know without being your doctor?


Without that psychiatrist being a meditator himself/herself, how would he/she know if meditation would help this lady with her condition?

FWIW, I used to have migraines myself as a child and they have gone away. Meditation did the trick.


That's great you think you've cured migraines with meditation but is this really scientific (do you actually know this for a fact?) and is giving other people with migraines (PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW) a possible false hope that their condition was the same as yours and will be cured just the same not a problem?

This along with those Ruthless Truth people talking about cancer and AIDS being cured is more examples of what not to profess from supposed advanced practitioners.

Jen Pearly:
A psychiatrist could in no way help me navigate tricky meditation territory, which is what I'm asking about. I'm under the continuous care of a board-certified neurologist for my migraines, thank you, and he happens to be board certified in psychiatry, too. Are you suggesting that I might get a helpful response from him if I call him up and tell him I'm seeing reality as distorted wave formations? Really??? Don't you think it more likely that I'll be admitted to a psych ward and shot full of thorazine and then lose my new job? Not too bloody helpful, I'd say.


Jen Pearly:
Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?


Which is it? Do you want to continue meditating or to slow it down? If you're seeing things that is not practice related you should go to a doctor.

Jen Pearly:
Migraine isn't a psychiatric disorder, and I'm not currently suffering any degree of depression. So why in the world would I make an appointment to see a psych? I've never found much use for psychiatrists or psychologists even when it did come to garden-variety depression, which, as I say, I haven't suffered from since 1999. Samatha practice cured my phobias where nothing else helped at all.


That's great you did that and meditation does help with how your thoughts affect you. That's all it does. If you see things and it's happening without your control I wouldn't expect that meditation would cure it unless it was a habitual thought pattern you wanted to atrophy with practice. Daniel Ingram talks about getting massive headaches during the dark night and I don't want to be responsible for giving advice that will cause you more problems.

Jen Pearly:
I gave my background to show that I'm really in this territory and have a low threshold for wildness. I'm not asking you or anyone here to medicalize what is happening to me or to offer medical diagnosis/treatment. I'm asking for dharma-savy and compassionate suggestions on navigating this tough practice territory and diagnosing "where I am" on the maps (re-obs?). It isn't my "fault" I stumbled into this territory. I'm trying to make clear that I have a propensity to stumble into wild rides while simultaneously not being an experienced, precise meditator. I'm asking for dharma suggestions, particularly since it is hard for me to read books at the moment with everything undulating.


I'm sorry I'm not going to take your word for it that you ARE in this territory. Do you know how many people make claims that end up not being true about their practice? EVERYONE. We all make mistakes and we need to go over this territory again and again. If you're having so many vibrations and seeing things that aren't real that you can't read books how would I proceed? I'm glad you don't want us to medicalize you but you say you aren't depressed and don't have phobias so then all that's left is anxious thoughts to take care of. Pretty much everything else is debatable on what meditation would actually do or not do. Real practice takes years to advance when you're doing it properly.

When you have insight you don't lose it. You can stop meditation but if you keep seeing things arising and passing away you won't be able to stop noticing it. Insight practice makes you go through withdrawal symptoms (dark night/dukkha nanas/etc) from letting go rumination over likes and dislikes. That's it! That's all it does that we know for sure. If you don't have depression or phobias then what is your goal?

Jen Pearly:
So let me ask things this way:

1. Is it within the "normal" range for vipassana practitioners to see the fabric of reality (or whatev.) as undulating waves continuously, even off the cushion, such that it is difficult to even read or work? Or have none of you ever heard of this?

2. Since I'm finding this unpleasant, am I definitely not in any stage of EQ?

3. If I'm still in re-obs, does anyone know why I might have experienced a sudden shift yesterday out of fine-grained fast vibrations into this more globular, warping macro vision? (And this is almost wholly visual; auditorily, I'm still hearing a high, fast ringing, but it isn't too bothersome.)

Thanks.


1. I've gone through A & P and the dark night and see fine vibrations and some undulations but not as severe as you but if you look at Daniel Ingram's book on the A&P and the suffering knowledges you'll see that different people get different results. Some go through the rough patches easier and faster than others. Whilloughby Britton is studying the effects of the dark night.

The Dark Side of Dharma

2. EQ is when impulses from perceptions of likes and dislikes arise and pass away with less clinging (clinging = ruminating about likes and dislikes). Some like to say it's less sticky. You feel very okay and your mind is still and it's child like and peaceful. Lots of clarity. You get through the dark night the same as everyone else. You keep practicing and it will return even if you get into equanimity has a baseline habit. It just will be less and less debilitating over time.

3. I have no idea. emoticon I'm sure some people here might pretend they do.

If you want to see precise practice I would say that Daniel's sticky is a good way to look at maps so you don't get attached to them.

Hierarchy of Vipassana Practice

Gil Fronsdal Noting

My post may not seem compassionate but I don't want people to have unreasonable expectations of what it can do because I don't want them to be disappointed.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 8:48 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
Richard Zen:
That's great you think you've cured migraines with meditation but is this really scientific (do you actually know this for a fact?) and is giving other people with migraines (PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW) a possible false hope that their condition was the same as yours and will be cured just the same not a problem?

This along with those Ruthless Truth people talking about cancer and AIDS being cured is more examples of what not to profess from supposed advanced practitioners.


At a certain point during the practice, my headaches returned and I could either stop them or bring them back at will. If this can happen in my case, then it can happen to other people as well. So I'm not giving a possible false hope but a true hope. Of course, this may not be true for everyone but for some it may well be.

I have never talked about cancer and AIDS being cured from meditation.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 9:19 PM as a reply to Change A..
Change A.:
Richard Zen:
That's great you think you've cured migraines with meditation but is this really scientific (do you actually know this for a fact?) and is giving other people with migraines (PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW) a possible false hope that their condition was the same as yours and will be cured just the same not a problem?

This along with those Ruthless Truth people talking about cancer and AIDS being cured is more examples of what not to profess from supposed advanced practitioners.


At a certain point during the practice, my headaches returned and I could either stop them or bring them back at will. If this can happen in my case, then it can happen to other people as well. So I'm not giving a possible false hope but a true hope. Of course, this may not be true for everyone but for some it may well be.

I have never talked about cancer and AIDS being cured from meditation.


Read my post. I was taking about the direct pointing people (Ruthless Truth etc). Curing a migraine at will is AWESOME. But is this something that will translate to others? To me it's almost as bad as promising cures for more serious diseases with meditation. It's just the sort of thing we need to avoid. It's okay to talk about what happened to you because you are speaking for yourself but it does not translate that it will happen to someone else. I hope it does but it doesn't rest on hope. It rests on what actually happens to that individual. If she continues to meditate instead of slowing it down and it actually happens then great. If not then hopefully there are other benefits to be found.

We (yes I'm including myself) need to be careful and understand what instructors go through. They meet all kinds of people from all walks of life and only a percentage of them will get something of major value out of meditation. Daniel's book goes into great detail with it and so does Bill Hamilton's. There have also been people who have practiced badly and got weird results. Of course the person giving the advise gets the blame.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 9:36 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
Richard Zen:
Read my post. I was taking about the direct pointing people (Ruthless Truth etc). Curing a migraine at will is AWESOME. But is this something that will translate to others? To me it's almost as bad as promising cures for more serious diseases with meditation. It's just the sort of thing we need to avoid. It's okay to talk about what happened to you because you are speaking for yourself but it does not translate that it will happen to someone else. I hope it does but it doesn't rest on hope. It rests on what actually happens to that individual. If she continues to meditate instead of slowing it down and it actually happens then great. If not then hopefully there are other benefits to be found.

We (yes I'm including myself) need to be careful and understand what instructors go through. They meet all kinds of people from all walks of life and only a percentage of them will get something of major value out of meditation. Daniel's book goes into great detail with it and so does Bill Hamilton's. There have also been people who have practiced badly and got weird results. Of course the person giving the advise gets the blame.


I don't think that I need to avoid talking about it. If you think that way, then you may do as you wish. I'm doing what I think is ok. I know that what happened for myself may not translate that it will happen to someone else but it may as well happen.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 9:54 PM as a reply to Change A..
Change A.:
Richard Zen:
Read my post. I was taking about the direct pointing people (Ruthless Truth etc). Curing a migraine at will is AWESOME. But is this something that will translate to others? To me it's almost as bad as promising cures for more serious diseases with meditation. It's just the sort of thing we need to avoid. It's okay to talk about what happened to you because you are speaking for yourself but it does not translate that it will happen to someone else. I hope it does but it doesn't rest on hope. It rests on what actually happens to that individual. If she continues to meditate instead of slowing it down and it actually happens then great. If not then hopefully there are other benefits to be found.

We (yes I'm including myself) need to be careful and understand what instructors go through. They meet all kinds of people from all walks of life and only a percentage of them will get something of major value out of meditation. Daniel's book goes into great detail with it and so does Bill Hamilton's. There have also been people who have practiced badly and got weird results. Of course the person giving the advise gets the blame.


I don't think that I need to avoid talking about it. If you think that way, then you may do as you wish. I'm doing what I think is ok. I know that what happened for myself may not translate that it will happen to someone else but it may as well happen.


Jen Pearly:
I am new here and had just posted a thread because I'm def. one of these DNYs. I've now "stumbled" into territory that is beginning to freak me out. Basically, I'm seeing (this is mainly visual) these waves with distortions off the cushion and on, and I can't make it stop. I've been good-natured about it for 24 hours now, but, um, I have some work to do and can barely read. I feel seasick, too, from the nonstop undulations. I emphatically did not buy a ticket for this particular ride; nonetheless, here I am, so now what?

It's nice to have/give warnings but what good practical good will a warning do if one has been cycling unwittingly in chaos since age 12? I would have loved and preferred to stay in salubrious calm abiding states once I found them 2 years ago, but I seem through biological makeup or early traumas or X to have been constituted with a low threshold for crossing over into "altered" consciousness, against my will, even during calm abiding sessions. How do I stop now seeing things as they are? I can't turn back, can I? My only diagnoses have been migraine with complicated prolonged aura and, later, major depressive disorder. My migraines are neurological rather than psychiatric but involve radically altered states, including the self disappearing. Since all warnings are too late and were for me unnavigable even when they weren't, what now?

May we all know peace and may I find a way to stop or slow down this ride.


Well do as you may. Have fun "curing" that.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 10:05 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
I wish someone could have told me about meditation earlier without me having to stumble upon it.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/4/13 10:52 PM as a reply to Richard Zen.
Richard Zen,

Thank you. It looks like there may be some helpful ways to apply noting to my current unease with the undulations, which still haven't stopped, though I'm "okay" about them for the time being, reasoning that indulging in fear is definitely not going to be helpful in any way.

I've read MCTB twice very recently, as well as much else by Ingram on his site and in videos, and did read that hierarchy earlier today, which will help me more long-term. I wasn't being a cowgirl and ramming myself into a practice I wasn't ready for with false bravado. I know that I'm fragile.

I understand why you would remain skeptical that I was in any particular place on Daniel's maps, and I do know and have read here that much more experienced people make mistakes, but I'm going to go ahead and say any old way that I'm sure I had the A&P Event last weekend. I had all the signs: up all night meditating with no pain, lucid dreaming for the past 2 months peaking at this time, vibratory glowing states while meditating in my dreams, clear experiences of phenomena rising and passing away during the all-night meditation, an incredible zealous clarity and high the next day--and then subsequent fear, misery (which was just about a half hour), disgust, and repulsion over meditating all during the workweek. I have had all the peripheral vibrations this past week, too, the very rapid vibrations. Then yesterday the downshift happened and the wider, slower undulations began (off the cushion and then on). While meditating last night, it seemed as if a spot on the carpet was stretching and changing shape 3D and then my hands felt connected with it somehow (I couldn't actually feel my hands, though, so it was sort of like they disappeared). I started questioning where intention was located.

I know how it sounds, my being a newbie and an ignoramus and all, and I know it seems like I shouldn't be able to have an A&P after only 2 years of fairly brief practice sessions. Honestly, though, people do stumble into this stuff without having had any practice at all. I'm one of those people. I had no goal that took me to these vibratory things, and certainly not to be enlightened. I started meditating to gain better control over my conventional suffering (ie, learn how to concentrate,calm myself down, and not spin out and indulge in anxiety escalations). That goal has been met to a large extent, though refinement and continued practice seem in order. What I have seen of the Three Characteristics I've just seen since at least the time I was an adolescent. I wasn't "trying" to see this stuff. It's reality, after all--so is it impossible that it would show itself to those not necessarily articulating to themselves that they were looking for it? And, yes, a lot of direct experience of not-self was through migraine aura. It is completely irrelevant, isn't it, that aura taught me things that hallucinogens or precise practice teach others? Much better to be precise with a practice and go in deliberately, yes, which is why I'm here now--especially since there seems no real turning back.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/5/13 2:30 AM as a reply to _.
Hi!

I think it might be useful to know what meditation tecnique you are using, and how much do you meditate every day, both on and off the cushion.

It seems to me that saying that you are in DN territory is a safe working assumption, expecially because of the previous A&P signs, vibrations going on and peripherical kind of attention.

What you describe is a bit extreme, but there are, as you said, people who are hightly sensitive to theese things.

I don't know about you shifting to EQ; I can only tell what you probably already know, wich is that cycling up and down on daily basis is normal, and the more you practice the more you get familiar with theese stage-shifts, and eventually the DN-EQ shift will be obvious to you as now the A&P-DN shift is.
I'm not used to the intensity that you describe, but all of my EQ-DN shifts were marked by a sense that "all of the sudden everything is not painful anymore (it can be both in the sense "pain is gone" and "pain is not bothering me")", and I think that should apply to you as well.

Bye!

edited once

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/5/13 10:33 AM as a reply to _.
OK. I read your whole original post but not all the follow-ups - since a lot of them seem to have gotten off-track anyway - so I apologize if I'm repeating something someone already said.

What's your current practice? What exactly are you doing when you sit down to meditate? How often are you doing it (how many days a week), and for how long (how many minutes/hrs each day)?

I think it's relatively rare for people to experience what you're experiencing in connection with meditation, and given your history of migraines and the sorts of phenomena you've had connected with them, I have a very strong suspicion that the migraines are the primary cause of what's happening, not the meditation.

I have a lot of sympathy for you, because it's obvious that, no matter what, you're having a really rough time and definitely need some relief from that. To that end, my recommendation is that you back off from meditation for a couple weeks, just to see what the effect is. If your problems don't go away, then it's probably not the meditation. Meditation effects don't usually last that long after you stop. If the problems do go away, you can work to gradually reintroduce meditation and see if they come back. That would be a very reasonable way to start getting to the bottom of the problem.

Does this make sense?

Also, have you consulted with your neurologist since these recent symptoms started?

My mother suffers from migraines and recently had a very bad attack that landed her in the hospital with amnesia. It was frightening for everyone. I understand how weird the results of migraines can be. They're not just headaches. And given the long history of the sorts of effects you're describing, it would probably be a good idea to rule that out before assuming the solution here is to hit the cushion any harder than you are.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/5/13 10:50 AM as a reply to Fitter Stoke.
Yes, this I recommend. Scientifically stop meditation and see if the symptoms go away. If they are always there then they are not likely meditation related.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/5/13 1:24 PM as a reply to _.
Hi Jen!
Mario and Fitter just chimed in some helpful questions and suggestions I think.

I just wanted to say that I can relate to having a low threshold for altered states. I have experienced the entire spectrum of the progress of insight, more or less continuously, since my early twenties without any formal practice besides little bouts opf sitting here and there. Mind blowing world shattering A&P at about 14 without any formal practice (still one of the 'biggest' state experiences of my life). I think that generally most experienced practitioners here who have communicated with other practitioners will have a sense that indeed individuals vary widely in their propensity to experience altered states and their susceptability to meditative techniques. Also, some people go through multiple Paths practicing a whole hell of a lot and don't seem to grok basic insights into emptiness that others get easily before path, or after Stream Entry. So there is an incredible spectrum of individual differences.

I can also tell you that once I finally sat down and started practicing seriously and began moving through stages of awakening, there have been alternating phases of much less weirdness and much greater weirdness. And it's tough to predict what will come next or understand all the causes and conditions. But that said, my overall happiness and equanimity and clarity have steadily increased due to practice and much greater stability in life has been the result. This took some time to sort out though.

On the topic of stepping back from meditating for a spell and seeing what becomes of your symptoms, I think that couldn't hurt. However, the cause and effect could be complex. There could be something about meditation (or how you are doing it) that triggered a physiological response (the undulations) that is related to your underlying neurodifference and won't go waway when you stop (even though it was triggered by it) like hives being triggered by something in the environment and then just continuing even after the stressor is removed. Or, as one with high state lability (tendency to experience a wide spectrum of states of consciousness easily), you may just be in for a very wacky ride! You may just experience the stages and states very vividly with lots of bells and whistles.

Oh and one more thing... perhaps you would benefit from more actively balancing shamatha and vipassana, calm abiding and investigation. They are not mutually exclusive. For people with high state lability who also have a flexible sense of identity I think it can be difficult to practice shamatha without challenging identity and getting insights. This may just be your nature. And anyhow at a certain point all that is really required meditation wise is just showing up and being with whatever comes up and letting it do its thing, letting more and more of the core processes of attention and intention etc show themselves as just more stuff arising and passing. In other words at a certain point in development for some folks, it may be impossible to cultivate shamatha without getting insights; but that doesn't mean you won't get the benefits of shamatha at the same time. Calmness, clarity, and syncing up with experience will support the kind of deep-in-the-gut readiness for awakening, for progressing through the stages of insight...

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/5/13 7:21 PM as a reply to _.
are you sure?

is life better or worse when you believe that?

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/5/13 7:54 PM as a reply to Adam . ..
It depends, and no.

RE: Please Help: How Do I Get Off This Ride or Slow It Down?
Answer
8/6/13 1:43 AM as a reply to _.
I may have some time August 9th in the evening if you are around. I am on Central Time. Let me know,

Daniel