I've written my background info somewhere else but I'll quickly summarize.
About 4 years ago I was experiencing a difficult time and threw myself into my Buddhist practice, and I believe I experience A+P. With life going so great I stopped meditating, and things soon took a turn for the worst, my new found freedom leading to some less than perfect behavior!
2 years into what I believe to be Dark Night territory I learnt about Peak Oil, leading to a new understanding of the severity of our environmental situation and all the conspiricy stuff about governments etc. Basically I wasn't having a very good time haha. The first thing I did though was learn about positive alternatives and straight away put effort into turning a negative into a positive and started learning about permaculture.
Anyway, another 2 tough years later there has been another event which thrust me into meditation again, although I had been doing it constantly for those 2 years, but this time things were totally unbearable and a new effort was found. Acceptance re-entered my radar and I found MCBT, which helped shine a light on some of the things I had naturally stumbled upon just before my A+P, during a time when meditation seemed oh so much easier!!
And to my question:
Over the last couple of month I have regained a decent amount of concentration skill and have the ability to witness the three characteristics in things if that thing isn't too strong and I've managed to get deep enough into concentration. Just last week I became aware of a deeper level of subconscious intentions built upon my negative belief system which has been sabotaging my effort in life.
So although things are definitely moving in the right direction, at no point has this experience been in any way pleasant, except the time in Jhana. As soon as I'm not meditating I am plagued with fear, lots of tension in my head and absolutely no energy. There is obviously a large part of me that really isn't happy about this no self milarky!
I have a memory of recognizing this swirling pit of unhappiness as being just basically a want for love and connection. I feel that I want to make efforts to recognize and understand this swirling pit and to make friends with it, but I find myself consumed by it and unable to witness beyond it. Everywhere I look, attempting to push the boundaries of my consciousness, I find I am still in it, my very state of mind appears to be that of this uncomfortableness. I feel that intellectually I know that this is the wound of separateness, I remember a time when I had made friends with this part of me, and yet I feel as if in my every moment of experience over the last few years I have been within this mental state. It feels extra trying because this state is so all consuming of my energy, and I presume the energy that I am looking for is the energy that is going into generating this state, and yet for me here and now I am powerless to do anything about it. My concentration has recently become aware of a little more subtlety and I am able to try a little less as I thought that my trying might be pushing one way which generated its push back, but to be honest the whole thing has just got a whole lot louder and more hectic. Any advice will be very warmly received!!
