One of the most difficult aspects of practice for me, is to experience the fear in and out of meditation. And I'm not talking about fear of mistakes you have made/will make in your life, not fear about money or even death. Not a paranoid checking under the bed fear or experiencing anything fearful. I wasn't afraid OF anything. I feel like if you distilled the essence of fear then tasted a drop of it it would be like what I experience. Just pure fear- of everything and nothing. My stomach would get queasy, I would start to sweat and then my heart start pounding in my chest. This is where panic sets in and I feel like I can't breath. I cannot emphasize enough how raw and intense this feeling is.

I've just finished a 21-day beginner course in vipassana noting technique and theses feelings came up. More than anything I just want to get these things off my chest, and I have no dharma friends to talk about it with in person, so I thought this was a good enough place as any to share my experiences and maybe get some advice. This is my first post on the forum.

The first time it happened on this retreat I was in meditation (walking, then sitting- it happened twice) and I witnessed all of the physical sensations (queasy, sweaty, heart pounding) but not the actual feeling of fear. I examined and noted all the sensations as they arose with a calm and peaceful mind. The whole process probably only lasted 5 minutes (? It’s hard to tell) both times, and passed. During the time leading up to the experiences I feel like I had finally quieted the thinking process by stopping and noting anything that appeared as a thought in my mind to the point where thoughts stopped arising spontaneously. I felt very fleshy, especially when I was sitting I had the perception of being skinned and just sitting as a raw and oozing body. Again, no fear arose, just the sensations that I normally associate with fear.

Then I experienced it all with the feeling of fear after a rather strong formal sitting where my concentration was quite high. It seemed as though this was occurring with the change in the way I perceived my surroundings. When I looked up at the tree tops I felt tall and vast and airy like them. When I looked at the ground I felt like I was a inch away and an actual part of the earth. All the colours where very vivid and clear and the air arround me felt more like liquid than air. When I looked at my body I felt a strong sense of "this is not MY body". My hands were like two little helper monkeys that were mostly attending to my face. It was all unfamiliar and I felt like I missed the comforting feeling of being "me". When I read over what I just wrote pretending I was someone else, I would say hey, that sounds pretty neat- what's there not to like? I asked myself the same thing during the experience and I couldn't really pin-point any specific thing that made me so fearful. Like I said, I wasn't afraid OF anyting, if felt like I was just experiencing raw intense animal fear. But I probably was in fact terrified of the change in my perception on an unconscious level. Especially that feeling of not actually being in control of your body or your thoughts. That voice inside my head that is contantly yammering away didn't feel like "my" voice anymore. That was extremely creepy. My breath was also something that, oddly enough, I felt like I had gained more control over. To the point where I was worried that if I didn't remember to breath I would just stop and have a heart attack. So I would take a big breath every once in a while to remind myself I was breathing. It wasn’t a comfortable sense of breath, but like I was drowning in air. I noted all of these feelings (“Feeling, Knowing”) and reminded myself that my body can take care of itself and I would breathe when I needed to so I just needed to let that control go. I feel like I was too caught up in the wanted for it to end (“Dislike, dislike, dislike. Wanting, wanting, wanting”) to really objectify the situation. Is that the intention of noting? This was my first noting retreat so I’m still very new at this.

[As a disclaimer, I have experimented with LSD in the past (15 years ago) and I found this experience to be quite similar. I could just say I was having a "flashback", but I don't think I really did enought to warrant having one of those. Although it does arise in daily life (maybe once every year or two lasting for less than 15min but I've had it last for more than a day in the distant past. When it was happening over the course of a couple of days I found out what the expression being "scared shitless" means. Like it actually gave me the runs) it comes up more strongly during my meditation practice when I reach a certain level on retreat and I have found it hard to move through. If you have any real knowledge or experience with LSD and can offer any wisdom I would greatly appreciate it, but if not then please keep your speculations and stories of your friends or friends of friends to yourself. There is so much ignorance about this topic I'm really not willing to listen to anyone that hasn't done it themself to talk about it. Much in the spirit of this forum if you haven't had the experience yourself than I don't want to know what you have to say about it. That being said I'm posting on this forum because I would more like to frame it as an experience that arises in meditation (because it does, and consistently) and maybe someone else with similar meditative experiences, LSD aside, can offer some wisdom. I really hope that this disclaimer does not detract from the conversation.]

So diligent practionner as I am, I did note all of this. As a noob it felt quite clumsy and didn't change anything. I just noted then continued my mini freak-out. This whole episode only lasted half an hour. I just tried to acknoweldge fully what was happening and tell myself this is a normal part of practice and I should be cultivating equanimity. Besides, there is an actually "fear" stage in the insight process so it's good practice to prepare for the real deal (holy crap, does it get worse than this? I am literally almost pooping my pants). I really don't think that it's possible that I'm at this stage because I've had no A&P event that's discussed here often whatsoever. Nothing even close (I wish, it sounds fun). I feel more like this is the first step of calming the mind but I’m latching on to some old familiar feelings and running with them to the point I’m afraid I’m losing my mind.

The feeling of "not MY body" has spilled over a touch into regular day to day life and I feel like I'm becoming more acustomed to it. Maybe?. During one walking session I stopped to note some stuff my face was doing - "Blinking, Swallowing, Licking, Blinking" - and I had a strong sense of "frog face". Like it wasn't my face, just like a digusting image of a frog that you see in cartoons looking really spaced out and doing gross frog things. Also do other things to a lesser extent all the time, especially related to my mouth and hands, feeling like they are not a solid part of me like before but separate entities. The way my tongue moves around in my mouth sometimes really grosses me out when I am eating. It's not a "freeing" feeling, just weird and uncomfortable.

If I'm aiming for an understanding of the three characterisitics, how would I use these experiences to do this? That's what confuses me about this practice. Do you just do the practices and whatever happens happens, or are you forming certain intentions to dissect certain aspects of your practice that affect your progress into insight? I can say, ok acknowledge no-self when fear arises around control of the body/mind? I guess I'm a little bit confused because I feel exactly the same as I ever have. I mean, it can't really be real insight if nothing has shifted can it? How do you know if you are practicing correctly (ie. on the path to awakening)? At this point (it’s just been a day since my retreat ended) I just feel a little bit weirder than I usually do and a lot more confused.

I feel like this post seems scattered but it has been three-fold for me: to be able to share my experiences with others, because I can't talk to any of my family or friends about it since they have no meditation experience, to maybe connect with someone that has experience with LSD and meditation, and finally to try and figure out if I am practicing correctly or moving in the right direction. I’m hoping that I can use these intense experiences to fuel my practice in a constructive manner and not just causing some psychological problems (which I have none). I did talk to my retreat meditation teacher about some of my experiences and she acknowledged them as part of the practice and suggested that the worst of it had passed. Ha ha. Maybe that's all I need to know