blackness before eyes and wooden head and other things

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wacky jacky, modified 12 Years ago at 2/20/12 12:43 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 2/20/12 12:43 AM

blackness before eyes and wooden head and other things

Posts: 46 Join Date: 2/18/12 Recent Posts
i'll describe my mediation session that i had at lunchtime today and hoping someone can help me figure out what is happening.

OK so i did watching the breath, counting the out-breath, up to 10, three times.

then i started looking at my kasina (a green bowl leaning against a zafu)

at the start it seemed to be rippling a little. i've seen this a bit lately. after that, a few of the usual things happened, like glowing on one side, getting darker then lighter. then i got the black circle in the middle of my vision happening. nothing unusual there. i stayed with that for a long time. eventually it spread so that it covered almost everything. there was a sort of green glow to the outline of things which would come and go, but the blackness was very expansive. i could see my dog lying near my feet and other things in the periphery, so don't worry, i didn't just have my eyes closed!

after watching this for ages, i got a sudden return of regular vision and realised my eyes were wildly cross-eyed. like the two images of my kasina were a couple of feet apart.

i know jhana states have a relationship with eye focus / being cross eyed and stuff. and i seem to mess with that a bit even when my eyes are shut. no wonder my eyes are so sore...

anyway, i shut my sore eyes, and kept going. eventually i felt a kind of pressure on and in my forehead. i've had that before. then it felt like there was a block of wood kind of holding up my cheekbones and eyes. eventually quite a lot of the whole outside of my head (internally a bit but not really inside) felt like it was wooden.

just wondering if anybody else has the black eyes and/or wooden head thing happen to them.

thanks. jacki.
Bart Castelijns, modified 12 Years ago at 2/20/12 2:28 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 2/20/12 2:28 PM

RE: blackness before eyes and wooden head and other things

Posts: 57 Join Date: 8/12/10 Recent Posts
Hey jacki,

I remember feeling like concrete once. Sometimes I will feel like a statue, but not feel any material properties. I think it has something to do with first Jhana and the body becoming still, experiencing the body as it if freezes up,

Bart
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wacky jacky, modified 12 Years ago at 2/22/12 2:28 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 2/22/12 2:28 AM

RE: blackness before eyes and wooden head and other things

Posts: 46 Join Date: 2/18/12 Recent Posts
hi bart. good to know i'm not alone in having that experience. it also seems to be related to a kriya i've been having lately involving my neck being twisted and then my head getting pushed down. today i got pushed all the way down to the floor a number of times. glad i was meditating alone emoticon
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Tommy M, modified 12 Years ago at 2/20/12 4:09 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 2/20/12 4:09 PM

RE: blackness before eyes and wooden head and other things

Posts: 1199 Join Date: 11/12/10 Recent Posts
at the start it seemed to be rippling a little. i've seen this a bit lately. after that, a few of the usual things happened, like glowing on one side, getting darker then lighter. then i got the black circle in the middle of my vision happening. nothing unusual there. i stayed with that for a long time. eventually it spread so that it covered almost everything. there was a sort of green glow to the outline of things which would come and go, but the blackness was very expansive. i could see my dog lying near my feet and other things in the periphery, so don't worry, i didn't just have my eyes closed!

after watching this for ages, i got a sudden return of regular vision and realised my eyes were wildly cross-eyed. like the two images of my kasina were a couple of feet apart.

Access concentration moving towards 1st jhana but not getting there yet.


i know jhana states have a relationship with eye focus / being cross eyed and stuff. and i seem to mess with that a bit even when my eyes are shut. no wonder my eyes are so sore...

That's partly true but you don't need to do anything with your eyes to go into jhana, the connection between the two is the natural position the eyes take when you go into jhana but it's not something you need to work on right now. Just stay with your object, nothing more fancy or complex than this.

anyway, i shut my sore eyes, and kept going. eventually i felt a kind of pressure on and in my forehead. i've had that before. then it felt like there was a block of wood kind of holding up my cheekbones and eyes. eventually quite a lot of the whole outside of my head (internally a bit but not really inside) felt like it was wooden.

Overexertion. Take it easy, relax and hold your object like you'd hold a baby; gently but firmly enough that you won't drop it.

When your kasina begins to visually shift around and move, close your eyes and bring up the afterimage of it then focus on that.
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wacky jacky, modified 12 Years ago at 2/22/12 2:35 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 2/22/12 2:33 AM

RE: blackness before eyes and wooden head and other things

Posts: 46 Join Date: 2/18/12 Recent Posts
ok. thanks for that tommy.

i'm getting what seems to be a related kriya. i also seem to have a head ache quite a lot related to the head tightness thing. i've been trying to relax it a bit and when i do the headache tension dissolves a bit into tingles on my head.

the visual blackness thing, isn't that a 3rd nana thing or something? it starts small, just gets very large eventually.

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