Hello fellow spiritualists,

it's a great pleasure to read your thoughts, feeling a little bit at home!

Sorry if my english is not perfect and the thoughts are rather unsorted, it's 5 at night at my place and this stuff keeps me awake.

What leads me here is my googeling about the dissolution/bhanga stuff because - you name it - I had a strange event happening while meditating last night.

I was in an energized, positive state after meeting my exgirlfriend, noone had time for me to go out and I... started meditating. Before that I watched Shinzen Young on youtube, the "feeling positive feel" videos and the dissolution/bhanga videos, which reminded me of a strange event of my childhood... 1hr meditation, which was the first time I would meditate this long alone.

I focused on the positive emotion inside me, tried hard to make it bigger with every breath, or just to focus on it (to make it bigger). All the time I (the watcher?) got distorted by internal talk which set me down a bit, so I cycled between talk/watcher/energy(body feel or emotion). This went on for half an hour, my father came in to say good night, I could only whisper back.

(I think I played with holding my breath for a moment to focus on the energy) Then the known feeling from my childhood came back: I lost my body identification? and I was the watcher back in my head. Falling down continuously. My hands and feet felt so far away... I had no sense of beeing in between. It was more... watching. I had fear. With the information from the Shinzen video "I" could tell "me" that everything is OK and that it will work out. Thinking about it makes me feel dissoluted from myself again. Beeing behind in my head, not being in my body so much.



It is more that "myself" is slipping away. Reality is here but partly so far away... I had to laugh when I grabbed a cup of tea because I thought "me" grabbing it funny.

When I was a kid, maybe somewhat between 10-14 I had long phases of feeling everythin boring. Now reading the book from this forum and thinking about it, maybe I just "meditated" about how I feel boring (=emptiness) and how I am suffering. The same feeling I had one or two years ago.

What bothers me is that the event of me falling, feeling my body so far away is quite equal to a dissolution feeling? And maybe it's just because I want to dissolute from myself because of the exgirlfriend thing, so that it's not a "proper" spiritual experience? And when I actually am in the A&P: My noting / insight skills are zilch.

I noticed that no one picked this up, so will just add a few comments:

1) Feeling of bodily distortion, things feeling larger, smaller, warped, far away, as well as thing falling, sinking, floating, and other things like that, are common in the early stages of practice and can occur thereafter at points also. The fact of bodily distortion experiences occurring is not the point, but did you gain any wisdom from them, did you learn anything useful from those experiences? That is the relevant question most of the time, though just having fun and interesting experiences may have some value also.

2) if you are in the A&P, actually in it, it is hard to imagine having poor meditative skills, as that stage is typically known for having very easy access to all sorts of meditative power, so either you should alter your expectations of what the A&P should be like, or change what you are naming that phase, as it is probably not the A&P

3) Dissociative experiences are typically relatively different from bodily distortion experiences.

4) None of these experiences are proper or improper in any formal sense, as that would be based on arbitrary criteria. The pragmatist would ask if they had any utility, the sensualist might ask if they were enjoyable or texturally interesting, and so it goes. Whether or not they are valuable may depend on your point of view and what you consider valuable.

Were they valuable? Did they do anything useful or were they interesting?

Daniel

Thanks for the comments of the Jedi Council Member!




Wisdom in the three characteristics insofar that I got a feeling for the watcher and for impermanence. And that my body feeling is not solid, but dependent of me feeling it.




At least I got a sense of what is possible. And of what is maybe a little bit too much distortion for me. And how important it is to have someone to talk to about this experiences.