| | Dear NT,
I acutually didn't remember your post, but I went back and found it. It was on the thread where I posted about a black sphere and some other things that had happened in my own practice. Your response was:
"You know, Daniel, every time you recount meditation experiences, you seem to descibing an epic, time-consuming struggle full of strange visions and feelings of energy, but what are you actually trying to do? If it was all full of bliss and happiness, then at least it would be a nice form of entertainment, but it always sounds pretty unpleasant..."
To which I responded (to you and others who posted):
"I will look into the Leopard Bro dude and the Bodywork stuff: thanks for the tips. I am getting older: 45 these days, and it is definitely not 25, that is for sure.
As to an epic struggle or whatever, I am just reporting. I have no great context for those things, no great maps for them, no particular frameworks that I can say are definitive. Find me the book that tells what to do when you start to experience a black sphere there doing that and I will read it. In the meantime: this is all experimental, a work in progress, things that show up and I deal with them as best I can given the tools and hints and intuitions I have available.
As to when I started seeing energetic stuff: the first time was the first time I crossed the A&P as a teenager, and stuff like that has shown up on occasion since in various ways, but I certainly don't see or feel it all the time.
As to things being all full of bliss and happiness and entertaining, well, that sounds nice: what do you suggest? I am interested.
Here's the bottom line so far on that: there is a degree of awareness of this body that is far beyond what I had before. This transformed some things and allowed some other things to be seen clearly that I am extremely glad were seen clearly, but it also substantially dialed up the sense of things unpleasant also, and this body was born, will get sick, feel pain and die. So said the Buddha, so has been demonstrated again and again, so my life has gone, as expected.
The clarity about this is remarkable, the facts of its ordinary aging mammalian aspects being highlighted by that clarity. Thus, things like muscle spasms and sore throats and the like are at once perceived in this much wider context that is as broad as the experience field, which really helps, and there is not that annoying sense of some part of things trying to figure out its vantage point as it pretends to observe or try to get away from pain, which also really helps, but the direct clarity about pain itself is very, very real. We wake up to this ordinary life in all its conventional aspects: do your best to care for this body and mind.
As to the black sphere thing: WTF? I have no idea. I do know that if you get your concentration strong and open up to that side of things by intention or accident, all sorts of odd stuff can arise and you get to deal with it. There are no great maps in that territory that I have found. I have some general principles, some guesses, some intuitions, but no more than that. I had never had anything like that happen before, and I have been meditating seriously for 20 years now. I had to wing it. I do get the sense that, if something magickal is happening, include something magickal in the way you address it. Thus, exploration using various props that happened to be around and happen to catch my interest.
I am pretty sure I can't really explain why I chose the props I did, nor can I easily explain why I did what I did with them. Why did I visualize silver circles of protection in the x, y and z planes forming a sphere around me and then practice controlled explosions in that safe space, testing out what their implications might be? Why did I start to try to visualize an idealized and perfect magickal trainer showing me how to do these things? Why did I suddenly feel compelled to walk into a store in Asheville, scroll through about 100 pages of tarot cards, and finally settle on the Witche's Tarot by Ellen Dugan and learn it to a degree that I had never learned the Tarot before? I couldn't possibly tell you.
Sound crazy? Maybe. It sounds odd to me just writing about it, but then I still have this scientist, skeptic voice in there somewhere from my upbringing that looks at this stuff happening and just can't make heads or tails of it. I stayed totally functional in other ways while this was going on, work was just fine, etc. I learned a lot in the processes and am now happy I went through them. It feels like something good happened, particularly the black sphere thing, like something was cleaned out by it. I feel lighter. Both sagas seem to have ended. What will happen now? I have no idea.
Anyway, I am just reporting. Speaking of why I don't report much: the projection, even small amounts of it, is really, really offputting, even for one just wanting to write about their own practice on thier own forum which is vastly more tolerant of this stuff than basically any other place on the web. I don't promise bliss and entertainment in my book anywhere that I know of. Adventure, definitely, but that is not quite the same as entertainment. I promise blissful states and stages, and these definitely happen. I promise clarity about this body and mind: can be done. However, something about having to constantly wade through people somehow imagining whatever they imagine and then projecting that out is more taxing than I think I generally realize and am generally willing to admit. Notice that there are not a lot of the old, high-level practitioners talking about much here anymore. A few show up on occasion, but many have gone elsewhere, and where, I have no idea.
Thus, while the questions are normal, and the projections are normal, there is something strange about how that just makes one want to wander alone, and some of this is still definitely still wandering, as I haven't promised to have figured out everything, just a very few specific things."
As to that being defensive, perhaps it is, but it is also very explanatory and honest without resorting to name-calling or other grossly objectionable speech, so far as I can tell. You should also take this in context: that was relatively recently after the whole Scientific Proof for Fairies thread, which was also initiated by Sawfoot and involved a long series of cynical attacks on me and my practice descriptions, so your post rode on the back of that wave of annoyance, which thus actually serves as yet another strong argument for the point about needing more moderation and people protecting a space where people can talk about deep practice, which is still very rare on the internet, and the essential reason for this forum's existence.
Vince Horn and I were having a conversation years ago about the terrible state of the world of Buddhist internet forums, my isolation in Alabama, and the need to connect with fellow adventurers in the territory I found valuable and interesting without being blasted for that, as happened on numerous forums I tried posting on back then, so this forum was created by the two of us in the week that followed for this purpose. Things that get in the way of that violate this place's whole reason for being, and the more of that shows up, the more I will defend this place. So, in that sense, my post was definitely defensive, and I will defend it similarly again. Sorry this caused you angst. Consider helpful posts that help support practice, that is my best advice. |