Diagnosis for New Meditation events?    

Hello everybody. My Name is Silas and it is nice to meet you all.

To give you a general description of my practice. I generally practice 1-4 hours a day. Mostly Samatha, Mostly Sitting, but on the days where I am doing longer amounts of time, I do noting practice as well for about an hour or so. I have done this amount and style of practice for a little over a year now. I mostly have practiced alone and through the guidance of books, online communities, and my own gumption so I have found my progress to be that of the "Slow horse" to use a tibetan term.

In my practice, over the past two weeks, it has changed rapidly. Bliss arouse out of nowhere and this bliss will stick around for 20-30 min then dissipate into an almost uncomfortable high. The uncomfortable high will last about 10 or so minutes before the bliss is back in full force and I am riding cloud 9 again. Its exhausting but incredible. This is happening for all but one day of sitting I have done in the past two weeks.

Where the hell am I? Am I missing something blatantly obvious or just not finding the correct line in the maps to show where roundabout I am? 

Thank you for all the help! Glad to be apart of this community now.

Hi and welcome! What you are describing could be the stage of Arising and Passing away. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/4-the-arising-and-passing-away/ It can be very intense. If that’s the case, the next phase is in many respects its opposite. When that happens, don’t despair. It’s actually progress. Best wishes!

thanks so much!!

aloha silas,

   Perhaps what appears blatantly obvious to one is not obvious to an other.

   Ask yourself, "How can these experiences serve to relieve suffering?" They have no other value.

   I love the ambiguity of "apart of this community," unintentional though it likely was.

   E komo mai.

terry



Try to plant

As for a child

A little wild cherry tree.

- bassho

Sounds like fairly classic first jhana, pleasure and rapture. The rapturous aspect falls away during second jhana, becoming more of a nice pleasure -- not a kind of manic, rapturous pleasure of the first jhana. 

The way to get to second jhana? Enter the first and really soak in the pleasure and rapture, like taking a long bath, then notice the slightly edgy and harsh aspect of rapture and let yourself relax/let go around the sense of edgy, harsh, effort. 

This is the way to make progress in jhana. You enter whatever jhana you can, soak in it for a long time, and then notice the slightly harsh/edgy/limiting aspects of the jhana and soften without trying to change anything actively. This often naturally leads to the next jhana.

Good stuff here: http://www.leighb.com/jhanaho.htm 

What Shargrol says makes much sense. Silas, you should take his word over mine, because he is much more experienced than I am. I didn’t even think of the first jhana because I kind of skipped over that part in my meditation practice so I haven’t developed the land marks for it. I still have trouble noticing the boundaries between first and second jhana, and the second jhana is closely related to the stage of arising and passing away.

If you are interested in cultivating the jhanas, this is also a great video: https://youtu.be/7mkYlus3ZLY