The background of things

thumbnail
ivory, modified 6 Years ago at 7/23/17 12:48 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 7/23/17 12:46 PM

The background of things

Posts: 199 Join Date: 9/11/14 Recent Posts
I was lying in bed meditating paying attention to how sensations in the body were appearing and disappearing. It was more like a looking rather than feeling. The experience of impermanence was very pronounced.

All of a sudden all sensations disappeared and the background on which sensations appeared came into view. I remember thinking that the background was very obvious and I wondered how I hadn't seen it before. My normal sense of self was not very strong but the background itself had a sense of me-ness. Like, it was me, but it wasn't the me I was used to.

On one hand, the sense of me-ness was very pleasant. But on the other, the fading sense of self became terrifying. I remember thinking that I shouldn't allow this to happen so I began to resist.

Things returned to normal and I was left wondering what the hell had just happened.

Has anyone experieced this before?
thumbnail
Doctor Avocado, modified 6 Years ago at 7/23/17 1:41 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 7/23/17 1:41 PM

RE: The background of things

Posts: 50 Join Date: 11/2/16 Recent Posts
Some quick thoughts.

"Me-ness" can seem to be the background, space, or witness of stuff. Sometimes very wide and expansive, and at other times inhabitating just a small constellation of sensations. 

I think here it's interesting to investigate the edges of what constitutes the sense of being the knower (the me-ness) as the background, against what seems to be the knowing of stuff contained within the background. 


Where exactly is the separation between them?


Or, what exactly is the knot the seems to sustain this feeling of duality? 


You could also make it more specific, taking hearing, seeing, feeling, etc alone - and look at the boundary between the apparent background knower and the knowing of just one object within that sense.