What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget)

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John Mckinstry, modified 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 12:38 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 12:38 PM

What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget)

Posts: 16 Join Date: 12/12/13 Recent Posts
Hello everyone,

I experienced something two days ago that I wish to discuss about. It was night time and I just started going into laying down meditation and after 15 minutes or so I was focus on the breath and in the background I could feel a positive sensation occurring during the expansion and contraction of my abdominals this kept going for a while but my session was ended after my mom knocked on my door to tell me dinner was ready (she forgot not to bother me during these times).

I got up to answer the door but there was no sense of anger just joy that they brought me food. I decided to go upstairs with them and soon enough the positive sensation stop lingering in the background and surfaced into all my senses. I felt amazing. It felt as though my senses had hit a climax of joy. After a while it started to settle down and I just felt good during the meal. When I was finished with the meal I talked with my brother about it for a little bit and went back to my room to try and experience it again.

I lied down and focused on my breath touching the rim of the nose, trying to feel the smallest feeling in that area. It wasn't long before I had a rush of emotions appearing and I told myself at that moment to just bring it all at once, hold nothing back! But as soon as I said that it was as if I was hit with a semi-truck of emotions and one of them stuck and I had strong feelings of depression and fear and that once I left colorado for thailand in may everyone I knew here would die even after 2 days of being gone. Soon I burst into tears after thinking about family and friends and even felt paralyzed because the feeling of crying felt so strong. It took a while to calm myself down but when I did I tried to avoid meditation all together.

The next morning I woke up but I did not want to do anything, ANYTHING, I just wanted to lie there. The feeling stayed with me through out the entire day, thoughts about meditation disgust me, I felt bored with the feeling of breath and the only thing that really helped was zoning out all together. But every once in a while the feeling would come back to me when I became mindful again. I looked online and found a guy that talked about dealing with problems in meditation and he had mention to just sit and note everything that comes up. So I took his advice... that night I tried to lay down and meditate but I could not it was so unbearable. More specifically as soon as I tried to note a collection of unpleasant feelings would come up and vibrate at an extremely fast rate making it difficult to see any separation. I eventually fell asleep.

The following morning I still felt awful my entire body felt painful I had a strong headache on the right side, but I decided to just try to sit for 30 minutes and lay down afterwards. So I did. During the sitting my body felt stiff but had strong feelings of pain and itching.

The 30 minutes past and when I lied down I still had some feeling of resistance but I push through it and told myself to just sit with it and note with a purpose. It seems as though I fell asleep but when I woke up I felt clear and calm, negative feelings disappear as if they were late for a meeting. Before I decided to get up I had a better understanding of the three characteristics, that everything comes and goes, everything will never satisfy in any sense, and there isn't a self in any of the sensations, concousiness, perceptions, feelings, or mind formations. What I think I am has just been a clever pattern that the mind thought as some sort of solid independent thing but isn't.

After all that I felt calm, peaceful, at ease and as though I have gone through the hardest thing in this life. As of this moment I feel as though there isn't anything else I need to do.

What is your opinion about all this?
Banned For waht?, modified 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 1:12 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 1:12 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget& (Answer)

Posts: 500 Join Date: 7/14/13 Recent Posts
terror will come if you reach to a point where you have absolutely no idea what to do, then can be no-self insight rise and permanent change can happen, otherwise its brain thinking that there is no self and other characteristics .To reach that far lots of work to be done, basically need to play out all the scenarios and prove them wrong, then mind will give up and liberating suffering can start, suffering what forces you find the way out no matter of what.

For now i think you have feeling that you have achieved something and clinging to it. I think you have played out one scenario - there is many.
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John Mckinstry, modified 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 2:29 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 2:29 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 16 Join Date: 12/12/13 Recent Posts
Alright thanks for your opinion I will continue.
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Simon T, modified 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 3:11 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 3:11 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 383 Join Date: 9/13/11 Recent Posts
Bliss, joy, climax... could be the A&P. It seems to happen is so many differents way to people so I guess there isn't much certainty in that diagnosis. Then feeling like doing nothing, lying there, like a puppet that you cut the ropes, perhaps? Boredom, meditation is crap... That would be the following stage: dissolution. Then annoying sensation. Could be the dark night, maybe up to re-observation. It seems that immediately after crossing the A&P, it's possible to rise through the stage very naturally without much practice. If someone has a very easy re-observation, it would be possible to move out of it by not doing much, and simply accept things as they are. Then equanimity install itself and with it a feeling of peace and that everything is just fine.

This could be an entirely wrong diagnosis but there is enough similarities in the patterns to point them out. Watch out for any cycle, any pattern that come and go during the day, just in case that you have open the door. Look out for your sensibility to stress, if indeed you got yourself yo equanimity you don't want stress to take over and send you down into the dark night. Read the equanimity section in Daniel's book and keep a look on things to see if those patterns described arises. Read also the section on the dark night in case that you find yourself cycle in there. Gently investigate if something as indeed changed for good. Is there something in the baseline of the naked experience that is different? Don't confuse that with some mental construct arising from the afterglow or the feeling of having realized something, that might or might not be a milestone realization.
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Dream Walker, modified 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 5:14 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 5:14 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Link to relevant parts of MCTB - MCTB 4. The Arising and Passing Away
Read from there to MCTB 11 Equanimity
See what you think
Good luck
~D
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John Mckinstry, modified 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 7:19 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/12/13 7:19 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 16 Join Date: 12/12/13 Recent Posts
I hear ya simon! Thanks for the advice!

Thanks Dream Walker for sharing the link. I re read through those stages and I can clearly remember what the mind was going through during each stage. I'll just keep noting and meditating like normal and keep a look out on what follows. This has been a very interesting process so far.

Like I told my brother (who is also a part of this thread) I could have gone to re observation or I could of gone to the third stage. There could even be a possibility that I didn't go through any of them and all I experience was just a stressful moment in relation to my soon to be trip to thailand.

In any case, I'll just keep practicing and noting and see what follows like daniel/the buddha says to do.

Thanks again for your attempts at trying to translate my experiences!
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Travis Gene McKinstry, modified 10 Years ago at 12/17/13 7:56 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/17/13 7:56 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 208 Join Date: 7/26/12 Recent Posts
Oh yeah, and when you have time, read this;

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3496074
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Bailey , modified 10 Years ago at 12/17/13 11:54 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/17/13 11:54 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 267 Join Date: 7/14/11 Recent Posts
Some of the things that you say sound precisely like some of the stages along the path. At the same time the rate at which you experienced these things make it seem very unlikely ie. 1) the positive experience, 2) the negative experience, 3) and then the peaceful experience.

If it was really the stages, you should continue to travel relatively fast along the path and complete more attainments in the near future. The stages and paths are relatively proportional inter-path and intra-path.

The gold standard for what happened would be to notice if you now are continuously cycling through the stages. If you are not aware of this idea of cycling let us know and one of us will explain it. You should be cycling through all of them constantly.

The second possibility, like you acknowledged is that you simply brought up a large latent amount of emotion. Not only does meditation travel you along the path it also simply purifies your "issues", anxiety, depression, bad experiences, ect. It brings them up and helpes you deal with them in a balanced manner. When these issues are brought to light and are met with awareness and equanimity they diminish and dissolve never to return. That is the amazing thing about meditation.

Anyway, as time passes it should be much more obvious what actually happened.

Eitherway, congrats, whatever happened it was very good for you
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John Mckinstry, modified 10 Years ago at 12/24/13 9:45 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/24/13 9:45 PM

RE: What is your opinion? (a shift in emotions I'll never forget&

Posts: 16 Join Date: 12/12/13 Recent Posts
Yes Raine thank you for the great possible explanation.

...and to give you some sort of answer on which one it could be...

I still feel this sense of peace that might encourage the idea of early light equ, but like you and I have mentioned it just feels like I was bottling up a lot of fear and anxiety about this trip and thinking about it while in isolation i'm sure helped trigger it.

I agree with you though, either way it was an experience that has helped me understand more about myself and what it means to be human.


Thanks again Raine your input is very helpful,
John Mckinstry

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