Hi Everyone,

Long time lurker looking to get back to consistant practice.

Brief background: 5 years with tibetan buddhism, fairly consistant practice when it was 'on', 1/2 hour to hourly sits daily, shamatha and thanka/diety visualisations. Known about MCTB for 3 years, get consistant for a little while then just stop, then I realise 'my life hurts' and get back into it.

Currently: 15-20 min sits daily, shamatha, hit access concentration, then do noting or just sitting with a sense, like just looking or just hearing and seeing whats going on, then visualise a diety or the world tree and get body tingles and feel good feelings (like free drugs yeah!) to finish off the sit.

Yesterday I read a thread about about seeing things with eyes closed and examining them in detail so I though I would have a closer look too. I sit with eyes open though. So, the visual field between me and the wall went like static and the static made different shapes like a ball, this happens regularly, but this time I looked closer and it looked like scenes were appearing on shards of mirror, like mundane street scenes. I started leaning in and out a little to get a better look (haha) and was going 'what is that, is that for real?'. They were clear but transparent and were just in a small part of my field of view.

What do you think that was, just a projection of a visual thought?

Thanks for reading, I'm just looking to make contact and continue on with a regular practice.

I recommend you sit at least twice daily, amounting to 1-2 hours.

Seeing with eyes closed and other things may happen at random, but I am not sure if contemplating this has any tangible benefit.

I got some visual things happening in the beginning that were really far out. They definitely had a different quality than the usual visualizations that I imagine and were different than slipping into dream state. One was of a orange and white cupcake and I was looking down at it and then a goldfish jumped out of the frosting, wiggled a couple times and subsumed back into the frosting. I was like WTF was that and it of course disappeared. The visual field had a window around it as if I was looking into a screen that was 3d. Really funky. I didn't think these things were necessarily relevant to getting enlightened so I did not practise them but they are cool transient phenomenon that might be related to the powers if worked on and practiced.
Good luck,
~D

Nice. Not too long ago, I was meditating up to equanimity, and when I was there, in the visual field of darkness (closed eyes), I saw smoke gently rising all around me, as though it were truly vision rather than the imagination. Like others have said, not related to getting enlightened, but still really cool, as I've never really gotten true "visuals" besides moderately detailed daydreams in EQ. I also had a thing where I had a bird's eye perspective, and I was pogo-sticking down, into the body of some being (animals, people, etc) and then back high up into the air. This was more daydream-esque, but it was still really cool. I didn't find any implicit meaning about past lives or anything. The meaning is this: your concentration is probably getting better. Nice!

You know you are in the right dharma place when the replys are "oh that's nice, now get back to work, don't get side tracked".

Did you go in with the intent to see things?

I usually prep my sits during the day or as I am walking home like "right, when I get home I'm gonna sit, do some shamatha, hit access concentration, look at mind and body, then climb up the jhanas as far as I can go", and the sit tends to go to plan more often than not. This time I went in going I want to 'see' what else is in there and I saw this.

Other times I will read about a state and then try to experience that. I not sure if this is the way to go, could I miss out on something that should naturally occur specific to my experience.

(I have more questions, don't know if I should post them in other threads.)

I started with a bit of shaman stuff and out of body attempts and then read "my big toe" by Thomas Campbell and started to listen to binaural beats in the lazyboy and dream/meditate depending on the day. So yes I was open to seeing stuff as in journey work but just kinda let it happen....and it did. I got ahold of MCTB after stream entry and was looking for an explanation of the 5th jhana and then figured it all out after the fact. Then the serious (for me) meditation practice started.

Go ahead and shoot with more questions....if you don't get what you want in responses here then start more threads based of the revised feedback..