Dharma diagnose me

anonymous anonymous anonymous, modified 12 Years ago at 12/18/11 11:03 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 12/18/11 11:03 AM

Dharma diagnose me

Posts: 2 Join Date: 12/18/11 Recent Posts
Greetings,

I keep reading those maps but i still fail to have any idea to where i might be on the path. But i will do my best to describe different important experiences and new "plateaus" i had during my life. I'm currently 27 years old residing in Sweden.

I was born into a charismatic christian environment and had my first strong spiritual experience at age 12 when i had what's usually called "the salvation experience" in which _all_ my existential fear completly (but not permanently) went away, and i felt that God/the universe loved me completly with all it's capacity, and that i was _exactly_ like i was supposed to be and completly accepted as i am. And all feelings of guilt and self judgement also went away (as well as judgements of other people). This made me "high" for months, and i felt intense devotion and an overwhelming inner joy. I have tried the drug ecstasy/mdma once. If ecstasy was like a candle, then this salvation experience was like a sun. This gave me a devotion/motivation to spend my life on understanding and getting closer to "God" and also to help other people with the same thing. Everything else paled in comparison.

The next 6 years i went through a cycle that basicly looked like - feeling normal - feeling existential fear and praying a lot - experiencing "God" (intense bliss/love, similiar to the salvation experience) - feeling ecstastic a couple of months (the preachers called this "being filled with the holy ghost") - feeling normal - fear again - repeat.

At age 18 i tried out meditation (zazen) a couple of times. Nothing happend. It was simply boring. Then i tried out chakra meditation instead, and wow! It took me three weeks to go "through" all chakras. This was my second transformative experience. I started to get intense experiences of love, but no longer only like it was God/universe towards me, but rather love from me to others. And i started also feel the moods of other people, their energy, by just putting my attention on them and i felt "high" from some people, from feeling their inner beauty and our energies mixing. I also sometimes experienced what i call "completeness", it was not bliss or joy, it had an unique quality to it. In which nothing could be added or taken away, with a complete absence lack of fear. And i also had some experiences of non-duality: once at an outdoor concert, strong "pushing" waves of chi at solar plexus and back for several minutes, then i felt unity with the crowd and started to cry of joy. I did this chakra meditation for about 2 years, 2-3 hours a day. Eventually it got unbalanced with too strong energetic sensations through and outside my body, my brow chakra started to "overfocus" from time to time, i felt dizzy, then it felt awful at solar plexus chakra and i felt strong nausea and had horrifying anxiety attacks.

At age 20 i started practising qigong + zazen instead. The negative symptoms i previously experienced had almost completly gone away after my first qigong session (the "area" i focused from shifted from brow chakra to middle of belly) and i became more grounded. But i still sometimes had those profound anxiety/panic/terror attacks. It felt like a negative mystical experience in which everything felt _wrong_ with me and it was absolutely terrible. I was considering seeking professional help for it. Then one day after meditation i felt this "completeness" i described earlier. A few minutes later i had one of those intense terror/anxiety attacks! But i still felt this completeness. Then i "saw through" the terror/anxiety and i realized it was just fear and that fear is only distrust in this completeness (absence of fear) . Then the terror/panic attack ended and i never had it since.

The following 7 years were much less dramatic and the experiences/insights much more subtle. One of the insights even made me feel stupid (that i connect to others through my own suffering, that we're all in the same boat). It felt like i discovered something very basic, instead of something more complex. Something obvious that was there all the time, but that somehow had eluded my attention. I continued to go through tough stuff and a lot of negative emotions. But i also had some experiences of my negative emotions being "beautiful", with no desire of wanting to get rid of them.

During the past year i've gotten more grounded and i've often noticed daydreams abruptly stopping and me suddenly finding myself in my body, being aware of it, and noticing my surroundings (trees, roads, cars etc) and feeling content with the present moment. I often have a "calm" feeling at chest area that i am like paint/clay, and that the universe "paints" with me all the time, that i am created in every moment and there's a tremendous openess feeling to this and it's very grounded. I often feel it when i dance or practise qigong (especially when i do movements near chest area).

I still experience plenty of negative emotions (i don't think i experience fewer negative emotions then the average joe). But i am slowly getting less in conflict with them and they instantly lose their grip on me when i sometimes stop being self centered and instead care about other people (as if the negative emotions were never there in the first place). And i find myself "in my body" more frequently, as i described earlier.

I have absolutely no idea where i would be on the map described here. Any ideas?
End in Sight, modified 12 Years ago at 12/19/11 7:23 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 12/19/11 7:23 AM

RE: Dharma diagnose me

Posts: 1251 Join Date: 7/6/11 Recent Posts
anonymous anonymous anonymous:
During the past year i've gotten more grounded and i've often noticed daydreams abruptly stopping and me suddenly finding myself in my body, being aware of it, and noticing my surroundings (trees, roads, cars etc) and feeling content with the present moment.


I have absolutely no idea where you are on the maps, but in my experience (as a person previously prone to daydreaming, spacing out, or getting stuck on trains of speculative thought), this kind of change for me corresponded with a significant amount of meditative development. Approximately how long do your daydreams continue on for, before they abruptly stop?

I also get the impression that the MCTB maps may be unlikely to help you very much, given what you've reported, even if you knew where you were on them.

Do you have a current practice / practice goals? If so, how's that been working for you?
anonymous anonymous anonymous, modified 12 Years ago at 12/19/11 5:17 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 12/19/11 5:17 PM

RE: Dharma diagnose me

Posts: 2 Join Date: 12/18/11 Recent Posts
End in Sight:
anonymous anonymous anonymous:
During the past year i've gotten more grounded and i've often noticed daydreams abruptly stopping and me suddenly finding myself in my body, being aware of it, and noticing my surroundings (trees, roads, cars etc) and feeling content with the present moment.


I have absolutely no idea where you are on the maps, but in my experience (as a person previously prone to daydreaming, spacing out, or getting stuck on trains of speculative thought), this kind of change for me corresponded with a significant amount of meditative development. Approximately how long do your daydreams continue on for, before they abruptly stop?

I also get the impression that the MCTB maps may be unlikely to help you very much, given what you've reported, even if you knew where you were on them.

Do you have a current practice / practice goals? If so, how's that been working for you?


Thanks for the kind reply

I don't know about the daydreams. But i also tend to daydream less overall. Yes, that's the problem with maps. I don't fit into christian maps either. It's no real disaster if i can never place myself on a map, but i find it interesting. I definitely had loads of arising and passing away (if that's another word for peak experiences) with many dark nights, but it's more difficult to assess the rest. I've gone a long way the recent years. I definitely feel very different now in my baseline experience compared to a even a couple of years ago. And i've also gone through emotional-spiritual stages, such as a couple of years ago when i started to open up to my feelings more and was very emotional and cry when watching sad movies etc (i'm a male). I become more open and "vunerable" then, allowing to really _feel_ all my emotions in their full intensity and not shield myself from any of them. The recent months i've started to laugh a lot (i often laugh myself to sleep thinking about funny things). A year ago i was very anxious about something, but one day it just dropped, as if someone cut out a tumor, and all the associated anxiety also dropped. Since then i'm a much more grounded person.

My goals are quite general. The main goal is basicly to grow in empathy, self understanding, wisdom, patience, acceptance, become less self centered etc. I mostly practise qigong and sit zazen right now, and experiment a lot with crystals (they actually work if you are chi sensitive, and i am very sensitive). The past three years i've also used a lot of kanna: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceletium_tortuosum#Effects (but not much at all the past monts). Sometimes i also do mantra meditation and visit a bhakti hindu ashram outside Stockholm. I've considered trying out vipassanna, but not done it yet.
End in Sight, modified 12 Years ago at 12/19/11 5:31 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 12/19/11 5:31 PM

RE: Dharma diagnose me

Posts: 1251 Join Date: 7/6/11 Recent Posts
anonymous anonymous anonymous:
I definitely had loads of arising and passing away (if that's another word for peak experiences) with many dark nights, but it's more difficult to assess the rest.


A&P is a very specific kind of peak experience, though there is sometimes an assumption that any peak experience is A&P-related. Your "salvation experience", for example, does not follow the typical course for A&P --> dark night (as A&P does not typically peak and then trail off with months of happiness)...and in general, I would say that for the highest peak experiences, there is a fair chance that they are specifically not A&P.

My goals are quite general. The main goal is basicly to grow in empathy, self understanding, wisdom, patience, acceptance, become less self centered etc.


What stands in the way of these things for you, right now, as you understand it?

I mostly practise qigong and sit zazen right now, and experiment a lot with crystals (they actually work if you are chi sensitive, and i am very sensitive). The past three years i've also used a lot of kanna: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceletium_tortuosum#Effects (but not much at all the past monts). Sometimes i also do mantra meditation and visit a bhakti hindu ashram outside Stockholm. I've considered trying out vipassanna, but not done it yet.


How many hours per day for these various practices (in total)?

Anyhow, your background seems quite eclectic, and I suspect that many people (including myself) will not be able to say much that you would find interesting or beneficial without directing the conversation towards a model they understand. So, with that in mind...can you discern "vibrations" as MCTB describes them?