mapelis blog

[mapeli]

Thank you Soren for your reply. I find it immediately helpful. My intent with this blog is to just write as honest and simple as I can, whatever I feel like each day, and then to read through and evaluate in the end. Then it is really helpful to get input from others. I encourage and appreciate all comments, questions and thoughts to this blog (that are in reasonable alignment with its' purpose of course), privately or publicly. As I'm in a learning-process, all help is welcome. So, it turns out that "the four Jhanas" were a better and more contextual interpretation than the "four corners of mindfulness" as the answer to the riddle of "what I sit on" that the chair tried to communicate. At least that's the new working hypothesis.

I have been in touch again with the sensation or state that I reached, which I still guess was at least the fourth jhana. And I think that I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it. But I don't get there each time, and when I do it's a lot more subtle.

It feels like the awareness of the charisms and bodily sensations shifts about an order of magnitude or two in resolution (or depth, or clarity), and sort of "float out" and goes from being boolean, black and white, to a gradient, and it feels very electrical. Perhaps this is the "awareness of energy". I just thought that the energy of the fourth jhana would be like a fire burning in the stomach or something, but this seems a lot more sublime and very elegant. But what do I know, perhaps it's neither. But, supported by Sorens comment above, and independently I have started to think I'm slowly learning about the fourth.

The first time I reached it, described above, I also later on merged with it and it all disappeared into blackness. But that has not happened since. The actual merging was the coolest thing in meditation so far. But yes, I get the message, I must not cling to desire-passion for feelings nor sensation. And doing so, that is, clining to it, clearly makes one miss the mark. I think I have proven that for myself as of recently.

I have also been questioning if I know anything at all about these things and perhaps I hardly know the jhanas at all and am just starting to get in contact with it. I wouldn't mind because that would mean that the roof is heightened, so to speak. But it would go against my experience and what I have learned theoretically from Jhanananda.

Now I just sit, trying not to crave progress of any sort. Meditation/contemplation has become more a continual "sinking into", with the occasional step, or jump, but I try not to seek it nor focus too much on it and just go with the flow. But then again, knowing ones surroundings sure is helpful when trying to navigate.

[mapeli]

I might have previously mentioned an increase in dream recall since I started this intensification of practice. Now I often wake up and have to write down things after only an hour or two of sleep (and feel surprisingly rejuvenated). I often have a couple of more by the morning. This has been great. Going through the day contemplating (the thinking kind)  the symbols of the dreams, trying to get the message, trying to distinguish the types of dreams,... it all gives me great pleasure and company and I can see both my intuition and knowledge increase. Slowly and by small steps but still.

I have gotten more glimpses into what I think must be previous deaths. For instance, I saw a guy in a car, that looked a lot like me, and was me, but different too, and I knew him, I felt him. I liked him too. I seemed to be him. And he seemed to be an undercover police officer. And then the ground would go away from underneath the car and tomato soup would be spilled all over the car. I tried to use the communication system to call back to the station but I couldn't work it. And then some weird one-man-helicopterish-thing came to get me instead. So, I think the tomato soup was my blood, and I was dead, but didn't really get it. And I was picked up.

Stuff like that has been coming up. That one was pretty nice actually, because I seemed to have been a very untroubled type of guy, and it was all relaxed and movie-like. But the same night I was a little girl with a baby sister, going up on the hill-side surrounding the village, to hide behind the grave stones of our ancestors before the army came. We seemed to be the only ones left. Before not too long we realized that we would have no chance of hiding and would soon be found. That was seriously devastating and scary. They will find us soon and they will kill us.

Then all of a sudden I'm awake and this life seems to suck a lot less. That kind of dreams (or recollection) is a serious motivator for both the practice of writing things down ("de-brief", externalize etc) and starting each day with meditation. Because to sit down on the cushion and take a breath into the first Jhana is really something I want to treat my self with after such a trauma. I can tell that the feelings from the dreams linger on a little bit.

These dreams (hypothetically past-life/death-glimpse dreams) also contrast very well against the symbol ridden get-the-point dreams. So I slowly learn how to approach each kind of dream. As an example of something else I also dreamed this night that I got educated about something, and I was very happy because I had met just the right teacher for a problem I had been pondering, and woke up assured that all such problems would be taken cared of. The teacher was a small kind old man, and I can remember him still. I also know what kind of things he would teach me (intellectual things actually) but I have not the faintest idea what he said. But I know I will not have to ponder that problem any more. That was cool and seriously helpful.

I hope that these experiences will continue because they are very fulfilling. I also, secretly against my false humbleness, hope they will develop and deepen.

[mapeli]

Greetings.

I got some more data for the hypothesis of the experiencing of glimpses of deaths of previous lifetimes during dreams that I talked about in previous posts. Tonight I woke up after a few hours from a seriously disturbing dream. I saw a friend getting killed by a spear in the stomach so I tried to sneak off, but the super mad leader of the evil killing-spree gang found me and started chopping at me with a knife, after having first told me about it and watched my fear. That was traumatic. I screamed HELP, HELP, HELP in panic and woke up.
It took a while to collect my self but as I was getting back I realized that it doesn't matter if this is a trick by my subconscious or if it's from a past life - to get through the emotions and memory of the dream still required the equanimity to revisit the situation and just let go of the panic, and the whole situation. Letting go of life in that body. Facing death. It was a useful experience and a training of letting go. I could feel two different places of my current body becoming relaxed and probably letting go of some trauma. But the feeling of being stabbed to death has followed me through the day. A bit weird.

I have also been contemplating the content of another thread of this forum, can't remember which one, where Jhanananda says that annihilation is the most scary thing one will ever have to encounter. And I have been trying to get to know that fear of annihilation in me, which I can relate to from certain childhood experiences.

I'm also starting to get seriously freaky good hearing. I can hardly walk through the village without hearing the cars on a larger road pretty far away, cut like razor blades through my silence. And last night I almost had to get up from meditating when hearing a neighbor get home and I could almost swear he walked into the house where I'm staying although I knew he was not. Need to re-calibrate sound/room-estimation ratios. And get further away from ... noise.

Oh yes. Sometimes it strikes me that there are not many places on earth where one could write things like this blog post without needing to leave forever.

The universe is vast and it is mostly empty space and silence. As far as I've been told.

Blessings.

[mapeli]

Some outer and inner circumstances conspired against me and I lost a bit the good groove I have been in lately. I could see I got off balance and I felt ... troubled, tired and weak. I had noticed that memories from an episode in my life that became traumatic and exhausting for me had surfaced, and I felt a bit conquered by them. "Oh no that crap again". But it ain't over 'til it's over. When it became time for the pre-sleep sit I noticed that I really did not look forward to it and wanted to skip it. So I diagnosed my will as compromised and sat down. When the curtain of the charisms came down over me, after a couple of minutes, I felt serious and deep gratitude. It did not matter that I had lost some saturation during the day, but as the contrast was larger than normal, so was my gratitude. But I really was a bit weak and tired too, so I had to buckle up a bit to sit through the one hour minimum mark. And so did I have to do this morning. This too was a good experience because it made me notice that I didn't have to struggle much as of lately, except for the occasional sore muscle, but I have not had any problems with impatience and such.

[mapeli]

Yesterday I went swimming in a fairly fast and lively river, with cliffs to jump from and such. A real nature-experience in a beautiful area that only the locals here know of, and deemed me worthy enough to see and enjoy it. When I came home I felt deeply refreshed, relaxed and alive, and when I lay down in mid day meditation I felt that longed for tingle in my lower spine. It build up a while and then started to jolt up a bit but I got too excited and exalted and did not know how to surrender to it or greet it properly so eventually I lost it. But it was nice and still very joyful as a sign of progress. I have experienced these energies before but mostly in sleep or visions and mostly through the base chakra direcly, or very fast flashes in the head, but never the building-up, wide awake type. So that made my happy.

I have noticed that the thoughts that are arising during the Jhanas, when sinking back into them, are taking clearer and clearer form, or theme. Often I can afterwards see that this particular memory or scene was it that surfaced, even when not engaging in the thoughts. For example, it could be something that has been in the most back parts of my awareness for a long time but I have not been in conscious contact with - so that my response to it becomes "ah yeah, that scene, now why has that been lingering for so long". Sometimes it will tell me something, sometimes it is garbage. But I have noticed that it is getting clearer.

I also "dreamed", during laying down meditation, that I experienced what I belive was my birth. Which otherwise must have been a seriously disturbing kind of vision. It was very undramatic and felt familiar. Another strange thing was that I also got some information about an unknown relative (of my mom) that I saw clearly and thought "oh, so that's him that we didn't know".  That was pretty cool but I'm not sure if I should tell anyone about it.

In meditation I'm also sometimes getting tired of the soreness of the body so in parallel with trying to work on my posture I've been contemplating existence without the body. For instance, in absorbtion, it is easy to see that if all body awareness would disappear, after the charisms  have faded or merged, only blackness would be left. I remember that Jhananda (in another thread or video) proposed that the material jhanas are also partly (or mostly) immaterial and I thought, maybe they are mostly immaterial, I am already in the domain of infinite space of blackness but just obsessing manically about the sensations in the body, or the contents of the mind and such things. That would certainly be typically human. So I'm starting to prepare the mind to just leave the body behind, as I suspect it is more natural than I'm making it up to be. I also remembered the astonishing realization of the falseness of the self, so my guess is that the obsession of the body is because otherwise there really would be no I. Hence - the dimension of infinite blackness. Now the trick seems to be to remove stuff in the correct order.

Today I had to sit in a chair and look like I listened to a conversation. I only needed to be there and give the impression of observing, so I meditated. As I did my body was falling more and more a sleep and a couple of times I reached that twitch/blinky thing that happens on the way to sleep and I thought that maybe I could just follow that out of the body, because it certainly feels like I'm suddenly on the outside. But I have not idea how to test it as I don't know how to move out of body. And I suspect it would be better to test it with eyes closed. But I have always wondered how that happens. If leaving the body when it has closed eyes, does one start seeing immediately as the OBE takes off? No clue.

[mapeli]

I have also noticed that I have started to help others in my dreams. Sometimes a dream would be just absurd if I interpret the content as something within myself, then I get a realization of my own self-centered-ness and a sting of shame, and then go on to do what ever I can to help out in the situation of the dream. Mostly bring light, bliss and comfort, and often the situation will resolve and I feel very fulfilled and happy.

Now Jhanananda says we begin helping others when our own shit is worked through. I know that I have stuff left, obviously, but I also know not to interpret things too black-and-white. I have been working on my shit for a long time and got some results. Obviously I can help others too.

The night to today I visited a friend who was very happy because he had manage to implemented sobriety in his life, which for him was a big deal. This time I didn't help out, but there was just happiness and nice to greet an old friend I haven't seen for a while.

I have to admit that the dreams have been a lot more fulfilling and valuable for me. Although I'm still a bit reluctant to call them OBEs, although they obviously are "experiences out of the body", that also have the benefit of providing value for me. But in order to make myself claim such fruit I will have to have learned how to experience leaving the body and have full volition. I would really like to fly around earth and space and such things. Maybe it means another ten years on the cushion, but so be it. I'm not going to be ashamed of my goals and wishes. Of all things that are to strive for, I could see few things cooler, that any of the superior fruit of the contemplative life.

[mapeli]

Last night I tried meditating with a lot more 'intent' that usual. I found that 'intent' for me does the trick of balancing between effort and groove. I got inspired after watching the video with 'nick' where I could see he seemed more aggressive about it (talking about the fourth and fifth sammadhi) than I had been so I thought I would try it out. It got a lot more intense and I got deeper a lot faster than I normally do. After a while I felt a rising of energy and then like a wind came over me and the bliss became more intense and concrete than ever. Erotic almost. All the bodily aches and soreness were gone and I definitely felt like I could sit for ever. I got very joyful because this means I got a glimpse of post-posture-problem-bliss and I could put that focus behind me. Afterwards I felt very refreshed, and all tiredness was completely gone. I did not feel at all slow or empty headed or dreamy but very balanced and alert.

Dreams have been pretty non lucid and boring old neurosis stuff though. The darker but old news kind.

I have however noticed that in this contemplative life, with a map so detailed as the GWVs, there is always at least some charisms playing or something going on, to keep me inspired. The blinking and moving lights of different colors always brings me joy during the day and seem to bring insight as well, as they often show up in significant moments. But the point is, when not being as inspired by dreams that I have been lately, now all of a sudden something else happens. That is a blessing, because if I can trust that this process will continue, I can drop worries of depression and lack of inspiration completely. Like I shouldn't already have done that anyways... But you know, "when being tired, old conquered thoughts can revisit and have the best of you" or something similar (Nietsche said).

[mapeli]

I just watched the video describing the four jhanas to verify that what I experienced last night really was the fourth Jhana. And it turns out the description matches my experience. This I pretty much knew, but verifying each experience is a part of a sort of review process that help convince me I'm on the right way. I don't know if I'm abnormally insecure about my self or inner experiences nor do I care. Another way of seeing it is as if I'm investing 'interest' in the subjective contemplative life.

Now I will have to make sure I can reach the fourth Jhana as often and as cleanly as possible. The increase of intent that I described above really made me relate to the concept of God as the 'consuming fire' - just sit through any sensation, in fact, step into it, cling to it, do not look away, and as it ends, so does I. And only that mist of bliss is left. It seems.

On this more aggressive way of entering the ecstasies, I noticed that the breath changed a couple of times, like different pranayamas started spontaneously to push through bodily 'blockages' and stiffness. I just kept being one with the meditation object and time and again stepping into the fire, and breath changed, came and went.

[Jhanananda]

In just a few sessions I have gone from relief to a slight dissapointment when the timer has gone off.

During one of the sit at this retreat I found myself in deep absorption when the timer went off, so I just sat through it until the ecstasy was over. So, there is no reason why you could not sit through the timer, unless your timer does not stop beeping, to get more meditation time, or absorption time, if you want it. 

It seems that I had some specific stuff I needed to face in order to sit longer, but once that was out of the way it is a lot easier. Especially restlessness was a problem I would not admit that I was having, but reading through the discourse on mindfulness of body helped a lot and now I am alot more rigorous in establishing a good, calm bodily ... abiding.

Getting through the many obstacles to deep meditation is essential. One of those is learning to relax deeply. I have found is certainly a component in learning to meditation deeply.

I'm starting to see clearly that the depth and energy of the jhanas really comes in waves (as has been written around here and discussed in the video series as well) and one of the tricks that I needed to learn for the longer sessions go get more enjoyable is to remember to shift attention when dropping down a jhana. As soon as there is some internal dialogue, there needs to be joy. But as soon as it quiets down again, the joy can fade too. It requires a different kind of wakefulness than is needed when doing a shorter session, where I would sit until I dropped down and then go off. There seems to be many levels of skillfulness to this simple pleasure of meditation.

I agree

Between sessions I have been thinking about what superficially seems to be contradictions in attitude recommended towards meditation. For example, I need to expect to get some thing out of meditation. I might even expect to get a lot out of it, otherwise I will not prioritize it correctly.

I agree that we need to expect to get something out of the practice of meditation, or otherwise we will not find anything.  I believe that expectation is what drives our instincts to find the religious experience.

However, expecting anything when actually sitting, besides the specific joys of each jhana, seems to be detrimental to the actual experience.

Well, I agree that at the same time we need to let got of our expectation when we meditate, because out expectation might mislead us.  Also, until we have a religious experience, we will have no idea what that experience is about anyway.

It's the same with effort. I need to have some kind of effort. I need effort to put my self on the cushion. I also need a kind of effort to relax and quiet down the body as well as the mind. But I also need to drop the effort and go with the groove. It seems like a subtle balance thing. Maybe like the opposite of what is known as boot-strapping, where you would start from nothing and end up with something great. But from the everyday-walking-around perspective, it would be starting with heaps of crap and ending up with nothing. Or rather, 'being' nothing. Or maybe it is like a chess game where you would play both sides (effort and non-effort, or doing and being), with the aim of exiting the game without anyting left on the board. But maybe I'm over-stretching it a bit now.

We could just say there are many contradictions in the contemplative life.  While we need to apply effort, we need to also learn to let go at deep levels.

I'm pushing my self a bit now, to see what happens. I hope to get four one hour+ sits each day, and at least two lying down sessions, not counting the night. I have some bodily adjustments that I need to make in order to manage the longer sits (a bad hip that sometimes rips my bliss apart before I have reached deep enough not to care about it) but it's doable and not that big of a deal.

It sounds like you have set a very good practice strategy for yourself.  At the GWV retreats we tend to sit 4-6 1-hour sits lus 1-2 laying down sessions each day as well.  I am not big on meditating on the pain, because I believe it is better for people to learn to love to meditate, or otherwise they are not likely to develop a long-term sitting practice that leads to bliss, joy and ecstasy.

I got both startled and motivated by the deva visit the other night and it seems I need to start adjusting to a radically different perspective of reality. I need to have stuff like that happen so much that I get used to it so I don't get too startled. Or be better settled in equanimity, I suppose.

When your contemplative life is more consistent, then you are likely to have visits from angels (devas) on a regular basis.

I have had a couple of experiences of scenes playing out "like a movie", with me being able to do nothing about it, but have not considered any of them an experience from a past life. However, since starting out on the spiritual journey years ago, my dreams and visions have followed a pattern that seems reasonable and I have been tracking most of my neurosis and fears, and the workings of the night. And some time ago, things really cleared up and I have not had much new unknown "psychological garbage" surfacing. Nothing has scared or surprised me, except for an occasional religious experience - but that would just be blissful. But some time ago I have been getting quick images and visions that I have not been able to track and have been a bit strange for me. I wasn't at all sure about the past life stuff before, but I have started to consider it a likely possibility, from my own experience. And comically I would have had to conclude that I was most probably some kind of floor-level animal mostly because I would always see a rug or a being very close to the ground and stuff like that. Different floor-level stuff each time though. This was not something I took very seriously until it hit me that maybe that was what I had seen when leaving that particular body. That would actually make sense. Hitting the ground is probably often a part of dying.

The other possibility is that you might have been an infant human.

All these different kinds of dreams, especially the more familiar ones - like "things-that-happened-during-the-day processing" or "psycological-garbage puke" or "neurosis-and-complex stuff"  - they all "taste" different. Also, the random crap type imagery that the mind throws at me when progressing into meditation, they are very easy to just dismiss. But these possible images of previous deaths seem to be a bit more ... persistent and clear.
When having a help-I-cant-open-my-eyes type of "movie" vision, it is often clear that it is not just my unconsious. These seem like ultra-light versions of the same. But still.
I don't know if I'm making any sense out of this, but maybe some one can relate. At least trying to express these subtle type of things seems to have a positive effect on me.

Not being able to open your eyes while in a dream is classic pre-OOBE.  It is also part of the sleep paralysis sequence.

During one of the lying down/drifting off type of sessions I had most recently (today? to night?) I saw a person (white against black background) that then turned into a group, then into a crowd, then into a huuuuge crowd, then into a field of just dots of light, and beautiful wave like motions would go through it. It was very beautiful. And I thought, either is this past lives of mine, or there is this place in space where a bunch of angels are standing around really close to each other, being really still and just ... doing nothing. I don't really trust my instincts and intuition because these kind of things are really new to me, but both ideas seem to make sense to me. And somewhere deep inside of me I feel like crying writing this, so it was obviously important for me.

This "crowd" could be the angels of heaven, or it could be seeing a glimpse of all of your previous lifetimes.  I have had both experiences, and cannot determine which one applies to your case without more details.

Thank you for your kind support. Although I have been realizing that the blessed life truly is accessible to me, as to everyone, as it unfolds there is really a progression from one unbelievable thing to the next. And each ... step ... seems beautiful and vulnerable. So, seeing how long the road is, it is truly amazing that you can stand as far down the road as Jef, and reach a guy like me six years ago. And as I progress, I still need a helping hand for each step. Again, thank you.

Now, I'm going to try show my old hip some yoga-love and see if we can agree better next sit.

You are welcome, and good luck with the hip.  At 60 with lots of arthritis, I have recently found up to 1 325mg aspirin 5 times a day works great for me.

[Jhanananda]

Having pondered it for a while, I now think what I experienced was the fourth jhana, but clearer than  ever. This is because, it all started with an escalation of the charisms, which are really a third jhana thing right?

Yes, it is my experience, and many of my case histories support this finding, that the charisms tend to arise in the 3rd stage of the religious experience (3rd jhana), and intensify as we go deeper into the religious experience

They all came together as though being a single "thing", a charming, liquid, loving ... "thing", that just grew and grew in intensity. There was a buildup that felt familiar, but this time it didn't stop. I thought - "man, this is getting intense... I better buckle up" and I had to really stretch my surrendering. I have had previous experiences with certain hallucinogenic drugs, but only the strongest had this level of intensity at take of. So I celebrated, thinking, finally, meditation has become better than any other experience I have ever had. And all I do is just sit here. Then I seemed to get almost emotional... almost erotic... It was so nice. Then I surrendered some more and almost got pulled into the sensation (as all charisms had become one - now there was just "sensation" - no different kinds) - like we merged - the observer and the observed - the sensation and me, the guy sensing it. And I had neither choice nor anything to do with it. It was deeply pleasurable.

If you were still aware of the external world, then this is a reasonably good description of the 4th jhana, because it is better than drugs.

And then, when having merged, the sensation was now just a single electric kind of energy, "exploded" - like my own body would fall into smaller and more subtle pieces and then drifting away in the wind. And there was just blackness, emptiness left. I was still there though. Deeply relieved. I was waaay to excited to go any further into the stillness though. I felt like yawning and maybe giggle a bit. Like I was home and safe and warm after a long journey. I just sat there, quite aware that I was a bit too excited, but the state was very stable and I didn't have to maintain it. Nor did I deepen it or explore. Now it was just silence, calm and black. Eventually I got up. I was no big deal. I was very surprised that the feeling of ... electricity and stillness ... was still with me. I looked in the mirror a long time, and then I stood on the balcony watching the landscape. It was in the middle of the night, but it was  still bright outside. This time a year night is just one long dusk/dawn thing, that makes the trees and grass glow in deep green. It was beautiful and I was very content.

This sounds like the 5th stage of the religious experience (5th samadhi)

When I woke up this morning, I noticed that my usual grumpiness didn't seem fitting any more. Not that I usually think of my self as depressed or anything, but somehow now I didn't need not to be glad any more. I had recalled and recorded a few dreams but nothing spectacular or startling. I got very happy remembering last nights session, and hurried to do my bathroom routine to get back to the cushion. I noticed that I was expecting all fireworks and stuff again, and had to calm my self down and sit down in the simple pleasure of the first jhana. I actually got to something similar as of the previous session, but a lot less intense. That subtle electric energy, clean, simple "atmosphere" was there, and was not that hard to get to, although it took the better part of the one hour sit.

The excitement of siting in meditation is a characteristic of one who meditates deeply.  However, none of us ever meditate at the same depth every time we meditate.  One just gets used to the ups and downs of deep meditation, which nonetheless, leave us more fulfilled than anything we have ever done, so we keep coming back for it, and even reorder our life around meditation.

Another funny thing BTW, just before the burst of the peak of last night, not the entry into the fourth (?) but rather the escalation of the third(?) - I got a vision (that is - image crap that won't go away, and has another palette and "weight" than junk) of just the head Jhanananda sitting in a desert environment against a dark blue radiant night sky, and it seemed really blissful. This inspired me a lot to whip up more bliss and joy, that eventually triggered the entry into the next level. What ever number. So I guess the distance doesn't mean much on the higher planes.

This sounds like one of my many nights of solo meditation in the desert.  For the last 3 years I have been meditating in the mountains, and I often have a jaguar that has taken interest in my meditations to accompany me as well.  I take him (or her) as a friend, whether hungry or not.  I quite like the idea of being food for an endangered species.

[Jhanananda]

I just figured, another reason for me believing that maybe the experience described above was at least the fourth jhana, is that because lately I have been having charismatic indications of an opening of the crown chakra. And recently, I find that one of the surest way of deepening the experience having reached a certain plateau, is let go of holding on to an activated third eye chakra. Letting go of the throat chakra was easier, as its' grasping tells of it self by a sense of choking, but the next is more subtle, so I got stuck on it without noticing. I don't know if this is in alignment with more experienced meditators experiences, but it's my bet until corrected.

Feeling energy (virtue/virya) in the chakras is just one of the many charisms that one who meditates deeply.  So, you will no doubt get so used to the chakras that they will become common place for you.

I do feel a bit low today. But one thing I've learned over the years is that the charisms doesn't really care about how I feel about things. In fact, when not happy, they are more valuable than ever.

The genuine mystic finds the charisms a constant companion, and comfort.  Christian mystics called it the Holy Spirit.  It is called the Shekhinah in Jewish mysticism; and it is called Shakti in Hinduism.  I believe the origins of the term Shekhinah is in the Hindu term, Shakti, which means the Holy Spirit of Christianity is none other than the Shakti.

I cooked some food that will last a couple of days and then walked to the office where I can borrow a computer, and as I turned out to be alone here I have now spend some time reading through this forum and the GWV. There is almost nothing unread for me, but I still find that I can get some inspiration from reading old stuff.

One of the major steps for me was discovering that I got in touch with these absorbtion-states when reading about them on the GWV. I now consider this a part of the fruit of intuition, which means I have to recognize that I had a some fruits ot the contemplative life prior to that. But still, it was a major step for me

I would agree, otherwise what else would bring one to the GWV website, and to take up a rigorous, self-aware, contemplative life, that bares fruit?

Now I'm leaving temporarily leaving my small world a while to go to a recovery meeting. I find that although I'm almost free of a lot of addictions and addictive behaviour, I find that keeping in touch with a serious recovery group, like AA or NA, helps me in many ways. People are honest, they are great at unpacking garbage and it seems, it helps my contemplative life in many ways. Also, it is good for humility. It has been many years since I quit drinking and drugging intensively, but I still prefer to keep in touch. And, as I'm lazy, it is good to have a sponsor to help unpack the bitterness and hurt of past.

It is good to find you are sober, because I found sobriety to be a core principle in my contemplative life, which led to the sweet fruit of attainment.

[Jhanananda]

Very well then, back to basics. If you can't beat them, join them. I took my body out for a walk around a beautiful lake, and had it lift some weights and do some yoga. Some endorphines wont hurt. In order to make something constructive while finding balance and humbleness again, I'm going to attack my weak spots. Previously this was the hip. Now it has become the neck. It seems I can sit with a decent posture, but only up to the neck. There the weight of the head makes it slope forward too much not to strain the muscles in longer sits. I decided to record myself meditating so that I would easier understand how to correct it. Having seen the disastrous upper back slope I found motivation to fix it. The following couple of sessions I have been really trying to push the neck backwards. This feels really unnatural, as I'm used to a more vulture/computer geek type of positioning. I can tell my body is not used to it. But it was a good exercise to meditate on/in this new posture. Almost immediately I got good results, as the charism of sound changed in new ways. Previously I have gone from a high pitch sound to a more chirpy, digital, morphy kind of sound, but now it turned to a deeper rain and roar. I was seriously tempted for a while to go see where the rain came from. Outside was just a beautiful summer night without a cloud in sight.

Years of bad posture can often reduce our success in meditating deeply, so it is good that you are working on improving your posture; and I am not surprised to read that you found results quickly.  Do keep it up.

I have started to explore the jhanas a little bit, as I'm getting more familiar with their progression and deepening. The idéa is that I'm probably going to spend a lot of time in the lower ones, so I might invest some time in developing them, and see how I could get the most out of each one. I have concluded, for instance, that I can be a lot more aggressive in actively stilling and tuning things down, than I thought from the beginning. Then I did very little, except as gently as possible steering the attention towards the meditation object. I really took the surrender part of meditation seriously. However, as I get a clearer idea of what kind of, and how to, surrender in each step, I can in fact add a little control too, to make sure that stillness, relaxation and enjoyment is balanced and strong. So it seems, right now, at least.

Some days ago I saw a vision of a bar-stool like chair with four legs, and one was bent and did not add any stability or support. I interpreted that as the four aspect of mindfulness but did not know how to incorporate it into my practice, and to correct the bent leg (or which it was). Now I'm trying to circle through them in meditation asking my self what I can do to increase a wholesome state at each level, at each corner. This I find I can do as "meditation" during the first Jhana, and it seems to be beneficial. But perhaps I'm just fooling myself.

I have also read somewhere on the GWV that Jhanananda suggests that each sense is meditated upon and incorporated into the building bliss. This, at the time, I was not solid enough in my practice to do, but I'm getting patientl enough to do it thoroughly and it seems like a good take off configuration. Most striking is that the senses that I have previously neglected as meditation objects are really giving a lot of payoff almost immediately, as if they were starved of attention. For me, it was the smell. But it gave the sweetest, very present, unpredictable kind of aspect to the bliss as the absorbtion deepened. And it is as if I have catching up to do, because thinking about it I feel a longing to get back and use the sense of smell as primary meditation object.
But more to the point - it seemed, the first time I read it, like the way to go. To "dress up" for the meditation, by dressing each aspect of being accessible at any given point into wholesomeness. But perhaps I'm just over theorizing. We'll have to see.

These are the things I'm currently thinking about.

You are now honing the depth of your meditation, this is skilful means.  Very good work.  If you keep going you will find that you will hone, and hone the ecstasies until you have milked them for every drop of nectar.

[Jhanananda]

I might have previously mentioned an increase in dream recall since I started this intensification of practice. Now I often wake up and have to write down things after only an hour or two of sleep (and feel surprisingly rejuvenated). I often have a couple of more by the morning. This has been great. Going through the day contemplating (the thinking kind)  the symbols of the dreams, trying to get the message, trying to distinguish the types of dreams,... it all gives me great pleasure and company and I can see both my intuition and knowledge increase. Slowly and by small steps but still.

I too noticed greater recall of dream content, and more detail, which represents the growth of lucidity in the dream, back 40 years ago, when I started a contemplative life.  Now, I am lucid all night long during sleep.  So, it is reasonable to believe that you too are experiencing increased lucidity in your dream-world.

I have gotten more glimpses into what I think must be previous deaths. For instance, I saw a guy in a car, that looked a lot like me, and was me, but different too, and I knew him, I felt him. I liked him too. I seemed to be him. And he seemed to be an undercover police officer. And then the ground would go away from underneath the car and tomato soup would be spilled all over the car. I tried to use the communication system to call back to the station but I couldn't work it. And then some weird one-man-helicopterish-thing came to get me instead. So, I think the tomato soup was my blood, and I was dead, but didn't really get it. And I was picked up.

I too noticed the recollection of past lifetimes and deaths from lucid dreaming.  And, sometimes the dream content is odd, as your dream was, but we can interpret tomato soup as blood.

Stuff like that has been coming up. That one was pretty nice actually, because I seemed to have been a very untroubled type of guy, and it was all relaxed and movie-like. But the same night I was a little girl with a baby sister, going up on the hill-side surrounding the village, to hide behind the grave stones of our ancestors before the army came. We seemed to be the only ones left. Before not too long we realized that we would have no chance of hiding and would soon be found. That was seriously devastating and scary. They will find us soon and they will kill us.

Then all of a sudden I'm awake and this life seems to suck a lot less. That kind of dreams (or recollection) is a serious motivator for both the practice of writing things down ("de-brief", externalize etc) and starting each day with meditation. Because to sit down on the cushion and take a breath into the first Jhana is really something I want to treat my self with after such a trauma. I can tell that the feelings from the dreams linger on a little bit.

Yes, recalling previous lifetimes leads to recalling previous deaths, which can be a difficult thing to do, but learning to take refuge in the religious experience (jhana) through meditation gives us strength to get through the day.

Also, recalling previous lifetimes gives us a deeper sense of impermanence than any other practice or observation.  This also bolsters our resolve to lead a contemplative life, and to complete it to full liberation.

These dreams (hypothetically past-life/death-glimpse dreams) also contrast very well against the symbol ridden get-the-point dreams.

Yes, I agree, from being lucid in my dream state for nearly 40 years, I too have found some dreams are highly symbolic, and thus dream interpretation is needed to understand them; whereas, recollection of previous lifetimes can be taken on face value.

So I slowly learn how to approach each kind of dream. As an example of something else I also dreamed this night that I got educated about something, and I was very happy because I had met just the right teacher for a problem I had been pondering, and woke up assured that all such problems would be taken cared of. The teacher was a small kind old man, and I can remember him still. I also know what kind of things he would teach me (intellectual things actually) but I have not the faintest idea what he said. But I know I will not have to ponder that problem any more. That was cool and seriously helpful.

I hope that these experiences will continue because they are very fulfilling. I also, secretly against my false humbleness, hope they will develop and deepen.

If you maintain your contemplative life, then it is reasonable that your lucidity in the dream will increase, as well as your dream recall.  Good work.

[Jhanananda]

Greetings.

I got some more data for the hypothesis of the experiencing of glimpses of deaths of previous lifetimes during dreams that I talked about in previous posts. Tonight I woke up after a few hours from a seriously disturbing dream. I saw a friend getting killed by a spear in the stomach so I tried to sneak off, but the super mad leader of the evil killing-spree gang found me and started chopping at me with a knife, after having first told me about it and watched my fear. That was traumatic. I screamed HELP, HELP, HELP in panic and woke up.

It took a while to collect my self but as I was getting back I realized that it doesn't matter if this is a trick by my subconscious or if it's from a past life - to get through the emotions and memory of the dream still required the equanimity to revisit the situation and just let go of the panic, and the whole situation. Letting go of life in that body. Facing death. It was a useful experience and a training of letting go. I could feel two different places of my current body becoming relaxed and probably letting go of some trauma. But the feeling of being stabbed to death has followed me through the day. A bit weird.

This is the down side of recalling previous lifetimes, because we tend to call the death, when we do, and those deaths can be quite traumatic, so we are going to want to have developed some equanimity by meditating to the depth of the 3rd jhana, which is where we find equanimity.

I have also been contemplating the content of another thread of this forum, can't remember which one, where Jhanananda says that annihilation is the most scary thing one will ever have to encounter. And I have been trying to get to know that fear of annihilation in me, which I can relate to from certain childhood experiences.

We have discussed annihilation several times on this forum and the old forum.  Essentially every stage of the religious experience (samadhi) is characterized by in creasing stages of loss of self, or annihilation.  So, the deeper we go into meditation, then the more sense of loss of self, or annihilation, we experience.

I'm also starting to get seriously freaky good hearing. I can hardly walk through the village without hearing the cars on a larger road pretty far away, cut like razor blades through my silence. And last night I almost had to get up from meditating when hearing a neighbor get home and I could almost swear he walked into the house where I'm staying although I knew he was not. Need to re-calibrate sound/room-estimation ratios. And get further away from ... noise.

Yes, extremely sensitive hearing is a product of deep meditation.  It is one of the many things that tends to drive mystics into the wilderness.  It requires lots of equanimity, which is acquired in spending lots of time in the 3rd stage of the religious experience.

Oh yes. Sometimes it strikes me that there are not many places on earth where one could write things like this blog post without needing to leave forever.

Sadly, even though there are lots of people practicing meditation, there are so few places where the phenomena of deep meditation can be discussed.  My conclusion is, even though there are lots of people practicing meditation, too few meditation deeply.

The universe is vast and it is mostly empty space and silence. As far as I've been told.

Blessings.

Yes, the universe is a big, beautiful place, but this tiny little planet is teaming with noising beings.

[Jhanananda]

Some outer and inner circumstances conspired against me and I lost a bit the good groove I have been in lately. I could see I got off balance and I felt ... troubled, tired and weak. I had noticed that memories from an episode in my life that became traumatic and exhausting for me had surfaced, and I felt a bit conquered by them. "Oh no that crap again". But it ain't over 'til it's over. When it became time for the pre-sleep sit I noticed that I really did not look forward to it and wanted to skip it. So I diagnosed my will as compromised and sat down. When the curtain of the charisms came down over me, after a couple of minutes, I felt serious and deep gratitude. It did not matter that I had lost some saturation during the day, but as the contrast was larger than normal, so was my gratitude. But I really was a bit weak and tired too, so I had to buckle up a bit to sit through the one hour minimum mark. And so did I have to do this morning. This too was a good experience because it made me notice that I didn't have to struggle much as of lately, except for the occasional sore muscle, but I have not had any problems with impatience and such.

Life has many difficulties, and deep meditation is not about burying those difficulties under a mountain of mantras, or religious practices, so the journey of the mystic is the most difficult of all journeys. As we negotiate the difficult internal terrain of the contemplative life we learn to rely more and more upon deep meditation for our sole refuge.  Good work.