I have been practicing meditation for the past 3 years and specifically samatha/concentration the past 6 months or so. So far I have managed to get by without ever having to post, and have been quite successful in developing my concentration ability.

This past weekend I was out on retreat and had a wonderful experience of pure bliss, full of flashing lights and colors. My entire body felt immense pleasure of orgasmic ecstasy. During my next meditation session I began experiencing kriyas. I could have let them completely go, but didn't because I wasn't going to hit the person next to me. I continued with anapanasati and remained mindful of the kriyas, and maintained my focus on the breath, without any mind distraction. I don't see them as a problem, only as a phenomenon of deep concentration. My mind was extremely quiet during this period, almost no outside thoughts distracted me.

This is where is gets wierd...when I got home today I decided to meditate for 30 minutes and let the kriyas fully emerge. They were extremely violent and the shaking was intense in my chair (back issue, not sitting cross-legged). After about 15 minutes my hand involuntarily when in my shorts and masturbated, resulting in orgasm during my session. I swear I did not do this with my own mind. I remained mindful and equanimous to the situation and completed my meditation. Basically, I don't know what to make of this. I'm not freaking out or anything, but I can't find anything out on the internet similar to this. I'm reluctant to sign up for another retreat, because obviously this can't happen in a group setting, it's completely inappropriate. I don't want to be controlled, that's the main issue. What if an entity is trying to deplete me of my life force? How do I determine that/handle it?

One thing to note is that I'm still overcoming a pornography addiction I've struggled with. I'm a little afraid that my addiction may be coming out through spiritual practice. Semen is my life force, and I don't want to deplete that source. I mean whatever, it happened once, that's cool, but if it happens again and again, that would weaken me, wouldn't it? I now remember why I took a break meditating about a year ago and it was the same exact problem. The masturbation/orgasm happened 4 times straight during kriyas from concentration practice, and I was beginning to feel weaker. The kriyas also began then because of an incredibly blissful experience with an amazing purple vision, similar to what I had happen on retreat this last weekend.

Just like anything I've experienced in meditation, I've been able to watch it and not resist, allowing it to happen. I'm very good at this and doing it right. The main thing is that I'm masturbating involuntarily, and I've been working to avoid doing that in my life to help free myself from addiction. I mean, it just doesn't seem to be a positive force for my path. I've also never read about kriyas being a part of concentration practice, and I've done a lot of reading, books and internet forums. Everything I've read typically mentions concentration leading a access concentration, then jhana, without any interruption. This kind of flew in from left field if you know what I'm saying.

Questions:
Has anyone experienced anything like this before?
Are kriyas a common manifestation of samatha/concentration practices?
Will the masturbation go away, so I can actually sit with other people around me, and for health reasons?

Help will be very appreciated, I've never asked questions before, because I've always found the answer, but this is very unique it seems. Thank you everyone.

very curious.

i would've thoughts kriyas were more from insight practice.  and could be kundalini stirrings, though not necessarily so, apparently
http://www.swamij.com/kundalini-awakening-4.htm
i'd also like to learn more about this as I've also been having to be mindful of not hitting my neighbouring meditator for the past year or so!

as for the spontaneous masturbation, great if you can surrender and 'watch' the body do its own doing.  
But I very much imagine 'you' can step in and intervene if you so choose.  You could perhaps set a formal resolution to preserve your lifejuice before practicing!  Then you can let the body move spontaneously, but with that as a set limit.

Still, sometimes I feel people can get a little too into not ejaculating. I believe mantak chia recommends ejaculating 1 in 4 times you have sex if you're 30ish and its different for different ages, i dunno how that fares with masturbation and whatnot, but the point is its not a total staunch "I will be good and spiritual now like a catholic priest"! find your right level.    I just add this in case you're being too overcontrolling/suppressing in your everyday life and then when you let go control your body simply goes for what its been missing.   But this is up for you to really examine yourself and be very very honest about whats really going on.  
As one of my teachers says "Renunciation should come naturally"  i.e. not forced, or your desires will find their way through anyway.

If you really don't feel any of that applies to you, then maybe this can approach a deeper question I have lingering about whether surrender practices really require one to have their psychological trip together, or your outstanding undealt-with-stuff and addictions get free reign.  

(i'm answering your question with more questions...)

 

Here's Shinzen Young talking about what to do with kriyas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9AHh9MvgyQ
       His shortened answer is try both resisting them and letting them go and use them both to gain insight.

There are some interesting videos online from the 1970's of people having all sorts of crazy kriyas from muktananda's shaktipat, if you want some context on this phenomenon.

Gordo,

Is this an insult?  If that is your intention, you are in  the wrong place.

Nick (Mod) 

That's a very unreasonable & horribly rude reply Gordo.

Thanks for the detailed original post and the questions Nathan.

The summer 2011 chapter in Silicon Valley Monk describes an incident of concentration-induced psychosis. And Gopi Krishna's writings on so-called kundalini indicate that before his symptoms began, he was practicing an extremely aggressive form of concentration meditation, albeit in a non-Buddhist tradition.

Psychiatrists who are well-informed about the side-effects of meditation undoubtedly exist, but I think you'd have to be extremely fortunate to come across one.

I appreciate all of your comments and advice, even yours Gordo ;)

Frankly, I'm happier than I've ever been and seeing a psychiatrist is the last thing on my mind. I pretty much figured out the problem, and it was me, not an entity. My subconsious was effecting the kriyas. I was able to catch it the next morning and instead went into a beautiful prayer sequence, and I heard faint, but wonderful music. I don't know anything about Kriya yoga, but is this it?

Anyways, I'm moving back to using purely concentration/samatha to stick with my practice. Two weeks ago I incorrectly thought I had reached 1st jhana, but this morning, I can confirm that I certainly hit 1st jhana for the 1st time. All factors were present as my awareness expanded. The breath became my entire focus.

This practice is amazing, as I was severely depressed 3 years ago (samatha began 6 months ago, did various vipassana up until then). My life has completely turned around and I look forward to furthering my meditation experience.

P.S. - Forgot the password on original account, and the site won't email the password. So, I'm using a new account with my other email. What's up with that?

http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15106

Seems like nothing to worry about. When one doesn't consider sexuality and spirituality as separate this doesn't seem worrying at all. Strange still

Stage of the Arising and Passing Away (A&P): characterized by kriyas, spontaneous movements, hyper-sexual ways of perceiving reality, shaking, colors, all that stuff: normal stuff.

D

I don't know where you got this impression. Read my 2nd post...I'm doing fine, just got some questions

Edit: Reading this again, 'life force' is a bad example of what I mean. Generally, my energy level and meditative concentration suffer if I ejaculate often. That is what I mean. Semen contains lots of healthy nutrients, so the loss of energy makes sense to me. You're right though, 'life force' isn't really good as a general term.

Thank you Daniel. I haven't read your book yet, so I'm unaware of your specific terms at the moment, but plan on reading it ASAP. Glad to hear this is perfectly normal.

He never said kriyas made him do anything. He released control and his body moved involuntarily. It's normal. He doesn't need a psychologist (for this).

Nathan,

Please check Peacedog's posts in this thread. He might be of help with your diagnosis. He comes from the Energetic guys camp.

http://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23526&sid=ce07d3b4eeb60e82ff11466df3616a01

http://yogicengineering.com/

Yes -- shaking, moving, spontaneous assumption of asanas and mudras, and especially sexual movements, etc.

Hi Nathan, 

I am sorry, but this post just sounds as if you are pulling our legs.  Sorry, that was a Pun Kriya, I had no control over that one.

Psi

Right, I am not trying to insult people either, but I think if someone is bold enough to discuss a topic such as Kriya Masturbation, then they should be understanding that most would view the subject as suspect, especially being a first post, and anynonymous, on the internet.  But, that being said, stranger phenomenon have ocurred with the human mind.

@Nathan  I had always thought Kriyas were deeply embedded instinctual type of samskaras, like serpent movements, ducking from birds of prey reactions, instinctual looking around reactions, and other fight or flight type of movements.  Masturbation has no real evolutionary purpose and seems to be more of a volitional act.  Are you sure you did not just masturbate in an equanimous state of mind?  This state of mind would view the masturbating as not being yourself that was masturbating, would see the act just an equal to any other bodily function, just another of many glandular excretions.  Which is all it really is, just another glandular excretion.  If you spill your semen your body just makes more, and if you eat healthily you will not get vitamin depleted.  I think one actually raises the base level of testosterone in the system through a normal amount of sexual activity, again, the Middle Path.

And , if this is all a prank, ha ha ha.  

Psi

Recognition, no blame , and change,  It is all history, irrevocably gone.   I have probably regretted saying thousands of things in my lifetime, as we probably all have, but how many do we really remember?  Close to zero, it will pass away.  Compared to the Universe this whole planet and all the formations is basically a non event, so we do our best and move along.  It is a bane to be born with so many sexual nerve endings anyway, even pleasure is a burden.  We do not ask for sexual tensions and forces, they arise and pass away due to an impersonal nature all on their own, yet here we are , burdened by them, dukkha.  Slaves to the glands, searching for the keys to unlock freedom.  Slaves to the brain glands.  This one is starting to release sleepy chemicals....  Some gland somewhere is shutting down the self delusion...

Guten Nacht Gordo

Psi

Gordo, in your defense, I skipped this thread because I had a hard time taking it seriously.  Masturbation for 15 minutes just isn't a kriya (or involuntary).  If it did feel involuntary, it's probably helpful to note that this isn't a typical meditation effect.  Nathan said he was worried about spontaneously breaking out into masturbation during group meditation, so recommending a shrink was either a snarky comeback or some honestly good advice depending on how seriously Nathan considered the problem, haha.  One-size-fits-all comment.

@Nathan: Welcome to the forum, BTW.   It seems like you solved your problem, so I wish you many happy non-awkward retreats in the future.

EDIT: You mentioned you had a pronography addiction in the past.  If this is still a problem, something that may help with this is to deconstruct how much of your libido is driven by fabricated triggers (like certain acts, certain body shapes, certain situations) and try to see how these are actually tacked on to and merged into the physical responses and feelings you experience.  When I did this, I realized a lot of what I took for granted as my specific taste and set of desires ended up being a conglomeration of outside material, like advertising, art, etc. that I had willingly coopted for specific social reasons.  This actually seems to be true of everything, but it was particularly startling for me in terms of sexuality because that seems so immutible.

Don't meditate in a waiting room....

The body is capable of performing *all* actions "by itself", It needs no egoic mind at all to function, It's not limited to masturbation. In fact this is one of my main focuses and I would say that today my body does about 80-90% of all actions "by itself" now without the "me" interfering.

In my experience this letting go of controlling the body is immensly helpful and I am hoping to arrive at 100% automation as soon as possible. The "downside" to this is that sometimes the body wants to do things that "I" (meaning the egoic mind) thinks is strange or socially unacceptable. Masturbating could be an example of this, but in my case it's been more about odd movement patterns (it tends to want to spin around when walking from time to time) or initiating social contacts with strangers (which usually turns out to be events of synchronicity).

In fact, I'm barely doing anything "myself" anymore although of course I don't tell anyone this. Most of the time it's just the body walking around, talking, cooking or doing whatever, and I'm in the back seat going "Wonder what it is up to now...". It's fun if you can just relax into it, and in my case it is very much intentional. Once I'm at 100% it's passenger consciousness all the way baby! ;)