A question about the spacious experience I just had.

Xu, modified 6 Years ago at 5/20/17 3:38 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 5/20/17 3:38 PM

A question about the spacious experience I just had.

Posts: 2 Join Date: 5/20/17 Recent Posts
Hello all,

I am new the the forum and I was drawn here by Daniel's amazing book, MCTB. I love the book and I am on the second read through.

I never experienced access concentration or jhana before.
And I just experienced something new in my concentration practice today and I want to know if I am making progress or if the experience is a random artifact.
A description of my experience:

I started my concentration practice by counting out breathes from 1 to 10 to 1 repeatedly for a while. Then I started labelling the breathes with the words "in" and "out".
After a some time, I suddenly felt my sitting posture is mentally transformed.
I can only try to describe this transformation in the following geometric terms:
Assuming that my initial sitting posture resembles a square shape, I felt the square shape has been tranformed, or stretched, into a diamond shape. I felt that my head is raised and turned to the right while I was sure that my head was still facing straight in front of me.

I concentrated on my posture for a bit of time and I realized that I started feeling very spacious.
At one point, I could only feel my left and right palms, which are resting my my thighs. I felt there is a huge space between my palms. 
This space kept growing for a while as if my mind was rising into the space.
This lasted a while until I lost the spacious feeling and I could preceive my normal sitting posture again.
The practice session lasted for about 50 minutes.
During the entire experiences, I do NOT think I experienced rapture or light behind my eyelid. The space, I felt, was a dark and empty. I felt also calm.

Is this related to Jhana or access concentration? Does this indicate my concentration practice is making progress?

Thanks a lot.
Xu, modified 6 Years ago at 5/21/17 10:08 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 5/21/17 10:08 PM

RE: A question about the spacious experience I just had.

Posts: 2 Join Date: 5/20/17 Recent Posts
Hello Pawel,

Thank you for your kind reply.

I am glad to know that I reached the access concentration.
I am looking forward to try what you have described.

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