Questions and Observations about Mental Sensations

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Avi Craimer, modified 10 Years ago at 11/5/13 11:13 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 11/5/13 11:13 PM

Questions and Observations about Mental Sensations

Posts: 114 Join Date: 10/29/13 Recent Posts
I've realized that my fundamental meditation technique is a bit sloppy and I'm trying to shore it up, so I'm going back to some of the basics to get really clear on them. I’m trying to get clear on the experience of mental sensations, and I’ve found the descriptions of them in books somewhat lacking.

In my practice so far, mental sensations always show up having the characteristic similar to that of a physical perception except that they are usually less intense and don’t always make much spacio-temporal or anatomical sense. Basically, the mental sensations are mental imagery in all the different sense modalities plus some other modalities that are still aspects of physical perception but not one of the five senses (like space, movement, shape, and other such phenomenal qualities).

But in some of the writings about the Mind and Body stage it sounds like meditators are supposed to see mental phenomena that are sensory without being of any specific sense modality (bare mental sensation). I don’t suppose it makes sense to ask what such phenomena are like subjectively since it would be hard to describe for obvious reasons, but if one could offer any sort of useful description of them (if they exist), I’d be very grateful. Sometimes I experience a vibratory sensation that isn’t attributable to anything obvious, but with more careful investigation I always can identify it as some subtle sense of movement, pressure, space, etc.

Another interesting thing I’ve observed is that mental phenomena are transferable between different sense modalities. For example, once I’ve dissolved my body sensations and felt their vibrations, I can sometimes transfer these vibrations (re-express them if you will) in automatic shaking movements, or in fluctuations within inner mental imagery. The shaking movements or imagery seem to have the same vibrational frequency and somehow seem to express the same mentation as the original. I can also move the vibrations around to different parts of my body, which is sometimes useful. When I dissolve an emotion or a verbal thought into sensory vibrations, it usually gets expressed as vibrations within my field of body sensations, although it can also transfer over to other fields.

Are these sorts of things all par for the course or do they sound unusual?

Thanks,
Avi
Toronto Spiritual Direction

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