Fruit of the Contemplative Life
Fruit of the contemplative life: => Case Histories with religious experiences => : fqmorris June 18, 2014, 01:18:06 AM
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I first tried meditation about a year ago at the suggestion of my sister who was trying to help me cope with the fact that my wife of 28 years had left me. I was a wreck, but upon trying meditation for about 15 minutes around noon, later in the day I realized I was noticeably more calm. I called her and asked if I might be experiencing the placebo effect. She said I was just open, ready.
About four months later, I had increased my meditation to about an hour a day of breath-focused walking meditation. I was starting to really feel the movement of clearly organized energy fields moving through my body, so I increased my meditation in steps up to two continuous hours a day, and the energy got stronger. Then, one day while walking in meditation I got a distinct thought that I should STOP walking, so I stopped, and waited... The my left leg felt an urge, a twitch, to pull up (I allowed that urge) and then to push forward into a step (I did so). Then my body wanted to shift weight to that front leg (OK), and then as I allowed each small increment, my body started walking me. This was my introduction to an "intelligent" force in my life I've since learned to call Kundalini.
For a while I continued with walking meditation sessions allowing the Kundalini to determine how long to do so. There always seems a clear lesson or progression of the energy movements, and a subsidence that marks a natural end of each session. And often when I commence the next day, the energy progression returns to where we left the day before. As with the first day that my body took me for a walk, kriya would emerge in these walking sessions. Sometimes they would pull me down into intense crouching yoga positions. Sometimes I would commence wide arms gestures very much like Tai Chi spherical movements. Eventually I moved to a prone position on my back on a yoga mat, because I was preceding meditation with stretches aimed to heal chronic shoulder tension causing neural problems in both arms and hands. Now I skip the stretches and move directly to prone meditation with kriya commencing almost immediately, and lasting for most of the sessions.
I think my progress with these energy manifestation has been marked by a gentle, slow encouragement in each step forward, led by an inner intelligence that seems to know what I can handle. I am sometimes now impatient, saying "OK. What next?" But I just have to let it unfold as it will, it seems. For now my path looks to be a continuing breaking up of internal body obstacles to the energy flow, and a few glimpses of other realms. Sometime I will get an inner image of a very dark blue space that has a distant surface of a mesh-like texture. I can zoom in to see that the dark blue background has a white lace-like surface, with a floral or plant-like pattern. And if I look closer the detail seems to repeat in a 3D fractal kind of way. Dark blue ground with a plant-like white structure on top or growing throughout the blue mass is a recurrent image I infrequently see. I don't know its significance yet.
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I first tried meditation about a year ago at the suggestion of my sister who was trying to help me cope with the fact that my wife of 28 years had left me. I was a wreck, but upon trying meditation for about 15 minutes around noon, later in the day I realized I was noticeably more calm. I called her and asked if I might be experiencing the placebo effect. She said I was just open, ready.
It is too bad that not more people who are in an emotional crisis resort to meditation, as you did; because if they did, then the world would be a radically better place.
About four months later, I had increased my meditation to about an hour a day of breath-focused walking meditation. I was starting to really feel the movement of clearly organized energy fields moving through my body, so I increased my meditation in steps up to two continuous hours a day, and the energy got stronger.
Those who meditate 1 or more hours per day get far more out of meditation practice than those who meditate just 20 minutes, or less, a day.
Then, one day while walking in meditation I got a distinct thought that I should STOP walking, so I stopped, and waited... The my left leg felt an urge, a twitch, to pull up (I allowed that urge) and then to push forward into a step (I did so). Then my body wanted to shift weight to that front leg (OK), and then as I allowed each small increment, my body started walking me. This was my introduction to an "intelligent" force in my life I've since learned to call Kundalini.
There are a lot of names for this, kriya, is one of them. The point is, if we just learn to let go at a deep level, as you did, then life just moves carrying us along.
For a while I continued with walking meditation sessions allowing the Kundalini to determine how long to do so. There always seems a clear lesson or progression of the energy movements, and a subsidence that marks a natural end of each session. And often when I commence the next day, the energy progression returns to where we left the day before. As with the first day that my body took me for a walk, kriya would emerge in these walking sessions. Sometimes they would pull me down into intense crouching yoga positions. Sometimes I would commence wide arms gestures very much like Tai Chi spherical movements. Eventually I moved to a prone position on my back on a yoga mat, because I was preceding meditation with stretches aimed to heal chronic shoulder tension causing neural problems in both arms and hands. Now I skip the stretches and move directly to prone meditation with kriya commencing almost immediately, and lasting for most of the sessions.
I think my progress with these energy manifestation has been marked by a gentle, slow encouragement in each step forward, led by an inner intelligence that seems to know what I can handle. I am sometimes now impatient, saying "OK. What next?" But I just have to let it unfold as it will, it seems. For now my path looks to be a continuing breaking up of internal body obstacles to the energy flow, and a few glimpses of other realms. Sometime I will get an inner image of a very dark blue space that has a distant surface of a mesh-like texture. I can zoom in to see that the dark blue background has a white lace-like surface, with a floral or plant-like pattern. And if I look closer the detail seems to repeat in a 3D fractal kind of way. Dark blue ground with a plant-like white structure on top or growing throughout the blue mass is a recurrent image I infrequently see. I don't know its significance yet.
Now you are moving into the visual charism. Eventually you might move into sound, smell, taste and.or kinesthetic charisms. It is all just letting go and letting it all unfold naturally. Good work. Keep it up. You are now a mystic.
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A few days ago at the end of a session I found myself in a blank space, without any input. Peaceful, except that the blankness soon became a place of mild anxiety for me. I didn't know how to rest there. I think learning how to be still after all this stimulating energy and kriya is my next lesson. Even so, after that brief moment of stillness, I felt a greater calmness for the rest of that day. And for an extended time the next morning I had my first (somewhat) lucid dream. It was more vivid than any I'd ever had, and I knew I had some control over how it would unfold. I knew it wasn't real, but it felt real. It also seemed to be a playground of sorts that I could move through. I look forward to more of both of those experiences.
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A few days ago at the end of a session I found myself in a blank space, without any input. Peaceful, except that the blankness soon became a place of mild anxiety for me. I didn't know how to rest there. I think learning how to be still after all this stimulating energy and kriya is my next lesson. Even so, after that brief moment of stillness, I felt a greater calmness for the rest of that day.
From your description this could be a number of places in the range of the religious experience, but for now let us put it into the context of the 2nd stage, or second jhana, as it is known in the Pali Canon. Most people get to the religious experience through a formal training program that includes formal meditation practice. Your story looks like you went in through the backdoor, so you do not have much of the foundations covered.
The foundation of the religious experience is the contemplative life. The contemplative life includes a number of things such as: mindful self-awareness, ethics, personal investigation, and formal meditation practice.
I will focus for the moment on formal meditation practice. Essentially formal meditation practice is sitting cross-legged in a comfortable position for extended periods of time, while the subject attempts to relax deeply and still one's mind. This practice can be done also sitting in a chair, walking (as you have been doing it), standing, and lying down (as you have also been doing it.)
If you spend enough time in daily formal meditation practice, then you will find yourself moving gradually into "a blank space, without any input." You will learn to take comfort in it, and you will learn the many nuances of this space.
And for an extended time the next morning I had my first (somewhat) lucid dream. It was more vivid than any I'd ever had, and I knew I had some control over how it would unfold. I knew it wasn't real, but it felt real. It also seemed to be a playground of sorts that I could move through. I look forward to more of both of those experiences.
Lucid dreaming and the out-of-body-experience (OOBE) are products (fruit/phala) of successfully following a contemplative life. So, your contemplative life is baring more and more fruit, which is very good.
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My Dharma foundation has been listening to audio teachings by Joeseph Goldstein, Pema Chodron, Tich Nhat Hahn, and others, and some reading of works by Master Nan Nd Wiliam Bodri. As for "mindful self-awareness, ethics, personal investigation," I guess I continue to do my best. I have been hoping (and led to believe) that the fruits of my meditation (the charisma?) will generate them and purify me. Any advice on those?
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My Dharma foundation has been listening to audio teachings by Joeseph Goldstein, Pema Chodron, Tich Nhat Hahn, and others, and some reading of works by Master Nan Nd Wiliam Bodri.
Just keep in mind that just because someone is popular with the mainstream does not necessarily mean that person is wise, or knows anything. Just keep in mind, "we know a tree by its fruit."
As for "mindful self-awareness, ethics, personal investigation," I guess I continue to do my best. I have been hoping (and led to believe) that the fruits of my meditation (the charisma?) will generate them and purify me. Any advice on those?
This is true, we have to aspire, and make an effort to discipline ourselves; however, that discipline will not be perfect until we are transformed by the awakening process, which is driven by the charisms.
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One more dharma source I am reading right now is a book by Namgyal Rinpoche called Body, Speech & Mind. I bought it because a quote from it by the author that I read online. I expect you would agree with it:
“the meditation on breathing, on the basic dharma of prana or energy flow, Anapanasati is not, in fact, a meditation on breath, but on in/out prana. That is what this meditation is for – awareness of energy flow.
And if you were to examine the word anapana quite closely, taking it back to it’s Sanskrit roots, you really end up with “yes/no energy."
This meditation is enumerated as the way to develop awareness of the energy feeds. You start with the breath because it is the most crude, the most obvious energy flow. The meditation naturally unfolds from there. Maybe the awareness of breathing might cease, but the awareness of energy flows, of the ana-pana-sati, should not." Namgyal Rinpoche
Are the any books or authors you recommend?
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To be more precise than Namgyal Rinpoche, the Pali term 'anapana' means the same thing that prana means, which both refers to the breath, and an ancient belief that the breath was life force. However, since I have yet to read about a Buddhist priest in the last 21 centuries that understood the 8 stages of the religious experience and the other superior fruit attainment (maha-phala), then I will have to say that Buddhism is no better informed about mysticism than Christianity is.
Also, from what you have already written here you are way beyond Namgyal Rinpoche. So, the only books that I can recommend are the ancient ones written by or directly related to key mystics, whom I have written elsewhere here. Also, the translations will all have to be challenged, because translators seem to be no better informed than priests.
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There are 4 key suttas in the Discourse of the Buddha, which refer to the practice of meditation. If you read, study, and practice what is written there, then you will know more about meditation than any Buddhist priest I have ever met.
Since you asked about breath meditation I thought I would give you the link to the sutta on this subject. It is the Anapanasati Sutta (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/pali/Phala_Nikaya/anapanasatisutta.htm) (MN 118) "Mindfulness of the breath"
As mentioned under another thread Kayagata-sati Sutta (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/pali/Phala_Nikaya/kayagatasati.htm) (MN 119) is Mindfulness of the Body.
Satipatthana Sutta (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/pali/Phala_Nikaya/satipatthanasutta.htm) (MN 10) is the "Four Paths of Mindfulness" and covers meditation on the aggregates.
The Maha-satipatthana Sutta (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/pali/Phala_Nikaya/mahasatipatthanasutta.htm) (DN 22) is the "Larger Discourse on the Four Paths of Mindfulness."
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Have you written a case history of your own, starting from your first meditation experiences?
I know you have provided snippets throughout this group site, but I would like to know the larger picture, especially the beginnings, and the major milestones.
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Well most of my personal anecdotes of my more than 40-year daily contemplative life is spread throughout this forum, and the GWV website. My case history (http://fruitofthecontemplativelife.org/forum/index.php/topic,11.0.html) can be found at the link, as well as: The Personal Experience of Ecstasy (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/casehistories/personalexperience.htm); The Experience of Meditation (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/casehistories/experiencemeditation.htm); The Proto-Contemplative Life, Lucid Dreams and Out-of-Body Travel (http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/casehistories/protocontemplative.htm). I also maintained a weekly blog (https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Jhanananda-s_Journal/conversations/messages) at one time.
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As has been the case for a while now, the feeling content of the enegy movements through my body come in many forms, sometimes painful, sometime equsisite. Sometimes it feels like knives are moving through me. Sometimes a cooling flow of water follows a path of wildfire burning. Sometimes it feels hollow inside with a flow of air through the space. Sometime I feel an intense pressure like a great weight of gravity. Or I might be pulled into positions as if I am being put in traction. Sometimes the surface of my skin becomes very sensitive, and any part of my body feel as sensual as if in orgasm.
Usually these sensations come in sequence, but are not predictable. They also usually have direction, starting in one part of the body, moving either up (toward the head (I am not standing)) or down, sometimes in a circular pattern either vertically (head to toe) or horizontally (around the column of my torso, or head, or any other spot). Often a clearly defined area of my body will be the focus, either my right side or left, front side or back. A center is often defined by a space between the activity on right versus left, and sometimes a vortex will form around that center space.
I am finding that the soles of my feet are becoming the source of a very pleasant energy that moves upward through my center eventually going through the top of my head. Sometimes I feel as if my entire body is a fountain of pleasant energy passing from a source below my feet through my head past my upstretched arms.
But sometimes, like this afternoon, I am put through painful waves of sensation, which I don't resist, but can feel like they will never end. I have learned to not resist painful cramping anywhere it occurs, because that will be a place where the generalized pain will most likely exit when it has taken its course. Today I think I've detected a pattern of direction whereby pleasant energy flow starts in the lower part of my body, and moves upward, either into my head, or through its top. Painful flow can move in any direction, but it will either dissipate as if a fire that burns out, or if it is an intense sustained flow, it seems to be exiting downward through my feet. So maybe good moves up, and bad moves down. Just a speculation.
It is getting more common for me to "see" a color of the energy as it moves. I think Buddha said the feelings in the body are composed of the four elements: earth, fire, water, air. And the energies that move through me have feelings associated with those four (as well as the "space" inside that they sometimes leave in their wake).
My fleeting visuals these days are of landscapes, plants, caves... Sometimes just a close up of a wall of some texture, today a green stone wall that transformed into a soft formless yellow/gray mass. Those images are clear, but fleeting.
And kriya, as always, range from hands moving the energy around, to my body being contorted into positions and durations I don't think I could do in a non-meditative state.
A post note: As today's painful energy flows down through my feet subsided to a relative calm, I felt something different than ever before: faint waves of energy gently lifted from me downward from all around my body, not through the channels of my feet. It felt as if many faint ghosts were exiting my body. These individual small waves left me many at a time, a full-body exodus of many bad energies.
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As has been the case for a while now, the feeling content of the enegy movements through my body come in many forms, sometimes painful, sometime equsisite. Sometimes it feels like knives are moving through me. Sometimes a cooling flow of water follows a path of wildfire burning. Sometimes it feels hollow inside with a flow of air through the space. Sometime I feel an intense pressure like a great weight of gravity. Or I might be pulled into positions as if I am being put in traction. Sometimes the surface of my skin becomes very sensitive, and any part of my body feel as sensual as if in orgasm.
Usually these sensations come in sequence, but are not predictable. They also usually have direction, starting in one part of the body, moving either up (toward the head (I am not standing)) or down, sometimes in a circular pattern either vertically (head to toe) or horizontally (around the column of my torso, or head, or any other spot). Often a clearly defined area of my body will be the focus, either my right side or left, front side or back. A center is often defined by a space between the activity on right versus left, and sometimes a vortex will form around that center space.
I am finding that the soles of my feet are becoming the source of a very pleasant energy that moves upward through my center eventually going through the top of my head. Sometimes I feel as if my entire body is a fountain of pleasant energy passing from a source below my feet through my head past my upstretched arms.
But sometimes, like this afternoon, I am put through painful waves of sensation, which I don't resist, but can feel like they will never end. I have learned to not resist painful cramping anywhere it occurs, because that will be a place where the generalized pain will most likely exit when it has taken its course. Today I think I've detected a pattern of direction whereby pleasant energy flow starts in the lower part of my body, and moves upward, either into my head, or through its top. Painful flow can move in any direction, but it will either dissipate as if a fire that burns out, or if it is an intense sustained flow, it seems to be exiting downward through my feet. So maybe good moves up, and bad moves down. Just a speculation.
This is a very good description of the movement of energy through the body, and what works and what does not work. Essentially resistance to the movement of energy (virtue) is futile and leads to pain; whereas, letting go at ever deeper levels, and attending to the charisms is very pleasant, fulfilling and calming.
It is getting more common for me to "see" a color of the energy as it moves. I think Buddha said the feelings in the body are composed of the four elements: earth, fire, water, air. And the energies that move through me have feelings associated with those four (as well as the "space" inside that they sometimes leave in their wake).
My fleeting visuals these days are of landscapes, plants, caves... Sometimes just a close up of a wall of some texture, today a green stone wall that transformed into a soft formless yellow/gray mass. Those images are clear, but fleeting.
Just keep letting go, observing, not interpreting the movement of energy.
And kriya, as always, range from hands moving the energy around, to my body being contorted into positions and durations I don't think I could do in a non-meditative state.
A post note: As today's painful energy flows down through my feet subsided to a relative calm, I felt something different than ever before: faint waves of energy gently lifted from me downward from all around my body, not through the channels of my feet. It felt as if many faint ghosts were exiting my body. These individual small waves left me many at a time, a full-body exodus of many bad energies.
This is a good description of the cleansing effect of a mystic becoming charismatic.
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As has been the case for a while now, the feeling content of the enegy movements through my body come in many forms, sometimes painful, sometime equsisite. Sometimes it feels like knives are moving through me. Sometimes a cooling flow of water follows a path of wildfire burning. Sometimes it feels hollow inside with a flow of air through the space. Sometime I feel an intense pressure like a great weight of gravity. Or I might be pulled into positions as if I am being put in traction. Sometimes the surface of my skin becomes very sensitive, and any part of my body feel as sensual as if in orgasm.
Usually these sensations come in sequence, but are not predictable. They also usually have direction, starting in one part of the body, moving either up (toward the head (I am not standing)) or down, sometimes in a circular pattern either vertically (head to toe) or horizontally (around the column of my torso, or head, or any other spot). Often a clearly defined area of my body will be the focus, either my right side or left, front side or back. A center is often defined by a space between the activity on right versus left, and sometimes a vortex will form around that center space.
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But sometimes, like this afternoon, I am put through painful waves of sensation, which I don't resist, but can feel like they will never end. I have learned to not resist painful cramping anywhere it occurs, because that will be a place where the generalized pain will most likely exit when it has taken its course. Today I think I've detected a pattern of direction whereby pleasant energy flow starts in the lower part of my body, and moves upward, either into my head, or through its top. Painful flow can move in any direction, but it will either dissipate as if a fire that burns out, or if it is an intense sustained flow, it seems to be exiting downward through my feet. So maybe good moves up, and bad moves down. Just a speculation.
This is a very good description of the movement of energy through the body, and what works and what does not work. Essentially resistance to the movement of energy (virtue) is futile and leads to pain; whereas, letting go at ever deeper levels, and attending to the charisms is very pleasant, fulfilling and calming.
If the painful sensations are the result of resistance, it is not my mental resistance. As I said:
"But sometimes, like this afternoon, I am put through painful waves of sensation, which I don't resist, but can feel like they will never end. I have learned to not resist painful cramping anywhere it occurs, because that will be a place where the generalized pain will most likely exit when it has taken its course."
I do not filter out any sensation. If I wanted to resist them, I could just stop meditation, and the painful sensations would cease, but so would my progress. I think of allowing the painful parts (which aren't pleasant, but not THAT terrible) as non-aversion. If some people don't have to go through these painful parts of the process, I think that is a rarity. I think they are a part of the cleansing of what is called my "subtle body." I expect they will lessen and pass as I reach a higher level of jhana.
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If the painful sensations are the result of resistance, it is not my mental resistance. As I said:
Perhaps there is a level of resistance that you are unaware of, otherwise you would be meditating at the depth of the 8th stage of the religious experience.
"But sometimes, like this afternoon, I am put through painful waves of sensation, which I don't resist, but can feel like they will never end. I have learned to not resist painful cramping anywhere it occurs, because that will be a place where the generalized pain will most likely exit when it has taken its course."
I do not filter out any sensation. If I wanted to resist them, I could just stop meditation, and the painful sensations would cease, but so would my progress.
Correct.
I think of allowing the painful parts (which aren't pleasant, but not THAT terrible) as non-aversion. If some people don't have to go through these painful parts of the process, I think that is a rarity.
This painful part, both emotionally and physically, is one of several spiritual crises, also known as the dark night of the soul. Everyone, who wants to be liberated from neuroses and addiction, has to pass through it.
I think they are a part of the cleansing of what is called my "subtle body." I expect they will lessen and pass as I reach a higher level of jhana.
That is another perspective, that is not wrong. Some call it "channels being opened." I have no problem with this interpretation. The spiritual awakening is a transformational process, regardless of how one wishes to express it.
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My last post objected to your calling painful energy experiences a "wrong way" by definition of the pain felt. I figured that I have pain in meditation, from experience, because I have need of release. I wish I could choose another way, but I feel fortunate to have landed in a reality where I know spirit is real. I have diligently sought a real path since early adolescence. My path in this lifetime is slow, so far...
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My last post objected to your calling painful energy experiences a "wrong way" by definition of the pain felt.
This is not what I said, nor what I implied. I simply found that there are many layers to the religious experience (samadhi); and it simply takes time to traverse all of the layers. Therefore, we cannot know it all after a short period of time.
I figured that I have pain in meditation, from experience, because I have need of release.
People often feel pain in meditation. Most of the time that pain is just from not learning to meditate skillfully. In your case, it could be years of bodily trauma that is being released, because you are no longer holding on to that trauma. Even so, you are likely to find many layers of traumatic experience will have to be gone through, which takes time.
Your reports reminds me of an experience that I had after 20 years of meditating at roughly the depth you are meditating at. I was at a 10-day meditation retreat in the Arizona desert. It was mid day, and I was sitting quietly meditating in the meditation hall at about the 2nd to 3rd stage of samadhi, where my mind was very, very still; and suddenly I felt all of my skin was on fire. My internal experience was that I was feeling all of the pain of all of the beings in this world, all at once. It nearly drove me screaming mad. But, I kept my equanimity, and remained mindfully self-aware. The pain eventually passed.
I wish I could choose another way, but I feel fortunate to have landed in a reality where I know spirit is real. I have diligently sought a real path since early adolescence. My path in this lifetime is slow, so far...
Yes, the advantage of meditating at depth, and the experience of the OOBE serves the mystic as proof that the spiritual dimension is very real. That realization often gives us unshakable faith in our path, and determination to continue to the end.
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I had my 2nd lucid dream this morning, shortly before waking up. I knew almost from the start that I was dreaming, as I examined the environment (an office space where I last worked), and then started interacting with the people there, after I realized that they saw me and thought I belonged there with them. At one point I started telling a female co-worker (that I thought I knew as a friend), that I wasn't really there, that I was dreaming.
Everything in the dream looked real, and very detailed, but as I moved around and through the environment, I realized that it kept changing layout, an impossibility in the real world. That's how I first confirmed that I was dreaming. As I continued to explore the place it got more elaborate and colorful. It started out as a single-level mostly white office place, but eventually looked more and more like a shopping mall with escalators and balconies and lots of shapes and colors. And the costumes of the people went from normal to neo-Victorian, with bowa and ruffles on men's jackets, and made of brightly colored and shiny fabrics, almost looking clownish.
When we all found ourselves outside on a country road, a departed from the group, walking toward a wooded area away from town. Then I awoke, and remembered everything I had just dreamt.
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Also, from what you have already written here you are way beyond Namgyal Rinpoche.
It was this statement (which I know is false) that made me first suspect that you were deluded. I doubt that you know anything about Namgyal Rinpoche. You were just flattering me so that I would follow you to get more of the same.
Now I believe you are a vampire, in that, I believe you have some high level of attainment, but you are using it to boost your ego, specifically by misleading others into following you.
You may now boot me from this group.
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So, let's see, you have been meditation for just about a year, and I validated your meditation experiences and methods; but now you think you are an expert and that I am wrong. Well, if you do not like what is said on this forum, then you can always unsubscribe without assassinating anyone's character, or invalidating anyone's experience.