Rougeleader (beginner)

[Jhanananda]

It is always with great pleasure to receive an update on your progress, Rougeleader. I have been wondering about you, due to your long absence. Yes, the opening of the heart chakra can come with it so very much pain as we become aware of the collective suffering (dukkha). Eventually equanimity will have to arise, or otherwise we will be driven quite. So, keep up the good work.

[rougeleader115]

Thank you so much Jhanananda. It has been trying getting used to a pretty much constant connection with the collective suffering. Especially during these times.

I have wanted to ask you again, even though i remember you telling me to continue to dip my toes in. Does the fear around the ego death experience dissolve as we keep experiencing it? Or is it always kind of jarring and tinged with fear?

I am having so much fear lately around the depth of my practice because it all feels so similar to the time in 2012 when I first experienced ego death. Ive been trying whole heartedly for years to release my fear around the experience, because I feel like I want it more than anything, but it was also the most terrifying thing still that I have ever experienced. No demon or nightmare keeps me up at night worse than the ego death i went through before experiencing a connection to the godhead. And feeling for months after like my consciousness just wanted to slip out of my body at any relaxation or automatic meditation on the body, breath and charisms.
 
I apologize for asking again because I have taken your advice very seriously that it takes time and it is just simply difficult sometimes shedding the layers of ones self. I just feel like Im hitting a wall in my own ability to truly let go and die to myself again. I dont  even know how I managed to let go that deeply before, it feels beyond me.

Rougeleader

[Jhanananda]

It is so good to hear from you again, Rougeleader. The topic of the ego death is one of the deepest topics covered in deep meditation. It has many layers to it, infact there are 8 layers to it.  If we consider that the identity is not a single cognitive element, but a collection or fabric of cognitive elements, and if we understand that depth in meditation essentially is the process of dropping those cogntive constructs of identity, then we can understand that negotiating the 8 stages of samadhi involves 8 ego deaths. 

These 8 ego deaths explains why so few ever traverse the 8 stages of the religious experience, and in part we can also understand why mystics are most often marginalized, because most people who experience any one of the 8 stages can come away terrified, and believe that they may have encountered the devil himself.

So, there are a number of ways to deal with the enherent terror of letting go of the identity.  In Buddhism there is the refuge. Refuge is a submissive state on consciousness whereby we develop faith in the Noble Eightfold Path, which includes the 8 stages of samadhi. You could do some chanting before each meditation session, something like: "I take Refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dhamma, I take refuge in the samgha."

It just so happens that Islam has a very similar construct.  After all Islam means, "to submit." The implicaiton in Islam is one is submitting to god. And, in Islam this is practiced everyday at noon in the form of bowing in prostrations. So, you could begin every meditation session with, "I sumit to god, etc." and you could do prostraations at that time if you are so inspired to do so.

In Christianity we have submission to god expressed as, "Thy will be done." So, you could try this methodology

After all what do we experience at the 8th samadhi? We experience dissolving into the collective consciousness of the universe, aka God. So, it might just take a few years of gettig used to letting go of your identity, but you benefit become evverything.

[rougeleader115]

Thank you so much for the thoroughly thought out reply to my question. The various examples and religions give me plenty of options to investigate and surely will assist me. Really really appreciate the response! 

[Jhanananda]

You are welcome rougeleader115, it is always a pleasure to receive your enquiries here.  Keep up the good work and do check in from time to time.

[Rodan]

But it ended with the demon ordering the undead in the city to attack me. He also sent a kind of psychic wave of his face at me, and once it wrapped around me I could no longer fly like I was. The undead surrounded me and rip me to pieces rather quickly. Luckily my awareness switched to a 3rd person view just as they grabbed me and I did not have to experience it happening directly.

Hello Rogueleader, I've faced this myself with a similar phenomenon. I have entities sometimes "attack" or rather fly themselves at my face and they wrap around my head like a gust of wind hit me. I'm wondering what this form attack is or what it signifies.

[Jhanananda]

I have had many of these events while out-of-body.  I have found they are common when we remain on the earth plane level, and it occurs when the "people" we encounter there realize we are self-aware.  For some reason this makes them feel threatened and attack the self-aware person out-of-body. 

The solution is when out-of-body leave the earth plane and rise to higher domains, and/or do not attend to the shadows when out-of-body and instead attend to the light.

[rougeleader115]

Hello friends,

I have been absolutely enthralled by the dialogue here on the forum the past few months. It is so nice to see deep questions being asked as well as everyone trying to figure out the nuances of the path and practice. I’m glad you are okay Jhanananda. Always giving us a scare.

I have been deep in my own practice the past few months, which is not to much different than usual. I just feel a drive in the core of my being now that doesn’t really let up. I only let up on the amount of hours I practice a day if the energy becomes too much for my psyche to sit with all day. But I have been feeling such a longing for union lately that it drives me almost to madness. I have no other way to describe it but I feel like I’m in the deepest love engagement of my life every day. Like I’m a teenager head over heels in love, but I know I’m in love with god. I just haven’t found my way back yet. I can just feel how if I don’t dedicate my whole self to this path, that it will really only be on me, because I was given a taste of godhood that most never even know exists. I also have been lucky enough to find Jhanananda which is a blessing in itself.

All day and night my body dances in various levels of bliss, and it still gets so intense at times I feel like I will die or go mad. But I know I won’t, or better, I’m learning to trust in the transformation and where it will lead. I just want the freedom from death and all else and the unconditional and infinite love I experienced again. I would die to. Even though I am still terrified to be fully annihilated. So my practice has simply intensified, and my life more and more molded to attaining that.

Still working on retaining my lucidity in my dreams. I have dreams every night, and record most of them. But I am only lucid once in a while when my practice is most intense. I usually then have a bad nightmare of things from my past or phobias. I can tell how my plane phobias and nightmares have progressed in ridiculous ways that it is obvious that my mind is trying to get over its fear of insane flight possibilities that are available once I am lucid in a dream. I have lucidly flown in my dreams more than a few times, but I can tell that my subconscious is still afraid to go above a certain height in the sky and go into space even though I’m honestly very excited to do so lol. I will just keep diving as deep as I can.

Best wishes
Rougeleader

[Jhanananda]

Good to see, Rougeleader, you making such good progress.  I find when I am in an OOBE and I encounter unpleasant beings or experiences all I need do is fly above it, and attend to the light not the shadows.

[rougeleader115]

Thank you as always for the guidance Jhanananda.

[Jhanananda]

You are welcome, Rougeleader. It always been inspiring to read of your progress.

[rougeleader115]

Hello friends,

Shortly after my last post, around the middle of June, I laid down to meditate and thought out to myself asking any higher beings that wished to aide me on my journey to enlightenment to come forth. I have done this before, and had very positive results. But this time was very different.

A Native American male spirit has shown himself to me every now and again over the years in my dreams when my practice is most intense and my dreams are consistently lucid. Well I was lucidly traveling in the woods with a group of college kids, and some energy pulled my attention to the edge of a tree line and there he was looking at me. Then he skipped a few times and started flying with his chest just a few feet above the ground into the woods. I thought to myself, oh I’m dreaming!, and started to fly after him. Once I got through the woods, I saw him standing at a ledge by an ocean.

As I approached him, I had a premonition of him meditating before this massive black and purple crystal. Easily the size of a two story house. Purple energy was spiraling into him and he was obviously on his knees out of body communing with the crystal. He then levitated and merged into the crystal.
 
As I came back from the premonition, I went to stand beside him and look out at the ocean. But the moment I did, he did something I have never experienced in all of my lucid dreams. He grabbed me by this purple spirit energy that was inside of my dream body. It was like being awake and having some grab you by the neck and somehow making you immediately enter an out of body experience, but I was already in an out of body experience! He took my spirit body energy and hurled me into sky towards the giant black and purple crystal in the sky. So much panic as I tried to fathom how he grabbed my spirit body and manipulated beyond my intention. I soared in the sky to crystal, and as I was about to hit it, a portal opened at my feet and pulled me through.

I went through a black tunnel at what I can only describe as light speed and beyornd. There were many colorful energies in the black, including very bright pink ink like splatters. But more important than that was the speed, it was so fast that I felt all that I consider my spirit self got stretched and flattened to the point I was like oh shit I’m dying! And I had to let go and get spread all the way out till I was unconscious.

I awoke on a beach to a giant beautiful goddess coming down from the clouds over an ocean. As she saw me, she stretched over the whole ocean she was so massive. I started to get afraid simply from the magnitude and fast movement. Her body started to rot, and turn black and scaled. Her teeth got sharp, the sky got dark, black tarry tentacles started to emerge from her body and the world. Drool starting to drip, sour putrid smells intensifying. Everything just kept getting worse and worse so fast that I could barely process anything but the intensifying fear and horror of the whole experience.

Just as she was going to grab me and obviously consume me in her dark world, something in me clicked so hard. I just felt without a doubt that everything was intensifying directly from my subconscious fear of the experience. So as it got worse, my mind felt worse, making more tentacles, more teeth, more rot. And in that moment, I threw from the deepest part of myself two giant heart stickers right onto the beastly goddess. She immediately transformed into a giant blue goddesss sitting on an entire planet that I watched from black space as awareness. The planet had hearts and clouds all over swirling in love, and she laid at the top with the heart stickers adorning her cheeks.

I woke up after that and of course had a spiritual crisis for a week or two. It was definitely an initiation of some sort also because a tremendous amount of trauma in my body and mind has been continuously flushed out over the last two months. My body and mind are becoming so unbelievably soft, concentrated, and full of energy that I have no other interpretation. I have entered whatever next phase for my spiritual journey. I do believe soon my lucidity will increase massively in the coming months because I was I was not cognizant how much trauma was still in my legs and upper back. But it is all loosening and filling with energy. It’s like all the kinks are being undone, and the energy is filling every conceivable part of my nervous system and body.

Best Wishes,
Rougeleader

[Alexander]

‘To eat and be eaten!’

Thank you for sharing the transcendental experiences as always, Rougeleader

By the way, what is your name?

[rougeleader115]

😂 i thank you for the quote Alexander lol.

I will send you my name in a PM right now.

[Jhanananda]

Excellent progress Rougeleader. No matter how scary these OOBEs get just keep moving forward.