Hey everyone,

I've been doing maybe more meditation than usual lately, also doing some Yoga most days (not intensive though), and I wake up from dreams some nights seeing flickers of slowly spinning random numbers, letters, and words (I don't see that they say anything meaningful in particular) when I close my eyes right after waking up on these occasions. It only lasts for a few minutes at most as I'm coming out of the dream, but I don't like it at all and it kinda freaks me out every time that it's happened so far.

Has anyone else had this sort of stuff happen connected with meditation, particularly w/ mantras or other concentration-cultivating techniques? If so, what can you suggest that I do about it?

Thanks

~M

EDIT: Mmm, might also be salient to report I experience sort of intense fear/dread while I'm in the corresponding mind-state while this is happening. So far I just try to dive into it, doing slow vipassana practice until it subsides and I go back to sleep without further ado for the rest of the night. Still though, it's fracking annoying, especially since I tend to have to get up the next morning pretty early.

Yes, had exactly that happen a half dozen times; 4 or 5 times not long after 1st path, over the span of a few months, and once randomly about a year later.

Always the pattern: very vivid dream turning nightmarish, wake up in an altered state/fear state, room full of hallucinatory "stuff" (floral patterns, images of entities, rainbow swirling) that was very substantial. Really impossible to shake off the state easily. It usually faded after 5-10 minutes. The first time freaked me out good. When it happened the next times I recognized it and just laid there and let it play out til it was done, even though the fear seemed to be part of the expression of the event. (That is, it always had a fear component, but the first time there was a panic on my part, which made it extra scary.)

Must be some random side-effect of brain re-wiring. It won't hurt you, obviously. It's just mind stuff. (You don't need to do anything about it, in other words.) It's interesting to hear your account; I have only heard a few others mention similar, one or two of them described similar happening while meditating as opposed to during sleep, but that never happened to me.

Hmm, yeah I do have fairly strong visualization abilities, so it could have something to do with those increasing. Thankfully my visuals aren't nearly as substantial or long-lasting as you're describing, I mean I get through it ok every time but it's annoying and more than a little frightening at the time. The dreams are also as you say, very vivid and often at least borderline nightmarish, though dreams I have following waking up from that one are usually pretty neutral.

i used to get pretty intense visuals during a&p and sometimes dark night. a&p they would be similar to what ona describes above - really intricate patterns, buddhas and ganesh flowing into eachother, etc.. and then during dark night it was stuff like snakes and decaying weird life forms. i mostly rode through the dark night visuals without too much addiitional backlash because although a bit freaky, it was pretty interesting too.

regarding fear/dread, here's something to look into. when in the midst of fear/terror/dread arising, do you ever notice a space or gap of stillness interspersed between the arising of the fear related sensations? this is something i caught on to quite some time back. it would be intense fear, stillness, intense fear, stillness, intense fear, stillness... all arising and passing subsequently. so i would focus in on the stillness more intently than on the fear, and the fear would fade, leaving stillness. see if that works and report back if you want.

Yeah the fear's weird, and it's hard to say if it's psychological stuff, some facts of life I've been trying to confront for the longest time, or something else. It's this weird kind of empty dread, this feeling of lost-ness, and yeah focusing in on it does reveal a sort of stillness...maybe stillness isn't the right word..like almost as if it only comes out when I don't look for it, and then when I turn my attention to try and bring whatever it is all out at once and be done with it once and for all, it sort of subdues and there's just this slight feeling of unease.

But yeah, I'll keep investigating.

hmm.. turning your attention to the fear to bring it all at once and be done with it once and for all? i tried that in what i referred to as a rip the band-aid off approach and would periodically go really deep and maximize fear "on purpose" ("on purpose" in quotes cuz at the time it seemed like i had some sort of control over the fear, which wasn't true).. so it didn't work, to be honest. and that's probably because it was more of a pride fueled conqueror approach, rather than understanding how it comes about.

to expand a little on what i wrote above... the reason i suggested looking at fear and the stillness that may follow is because when you look really closely at that you might then start to see more thoroughly how fear comes to be and how it ceases.

Good point. Well I'll try to follow your advice as best I can.