This post is the second in a series; you can read the first here. I have already given a brief overview of what the goal of a particular style of meditation is, and why some individuals in this community might find it beneficial to pursue. The basic structure of this...
For millennia, the practice of meditation has been deeply intertwined with many of the world's major and minor religious and spiritual traditions, as a technique aimed as everything from developing magical powers to communing with gods and demons. By contrast, during the last few decades in the West, enthusiasts have...
The twitching is typical, like I said. Not in the sense that every time you meditate, from now till forever, you're going to have it. But it's common enough in stage 1. There are also related things that can happen in stage 2, but they're not quite the same. So I'd say that they might be gone by stage 2 and probably will be by stage 3. Your body will get over it eventually. Think of it as your body trying to adapt to doing this new thing; it takes some time to iron the kinks out.
Good luck with your practice! Let us know if anything interesting happens.
The factory & lenses metaphor seems like a good argument for why meditation should work in the sense of allowing a flawed process to discover and improve itself despite its own flaws. But: the key part of that metaphor is that using a flawed lens one can discover the flaws of the lens, by confronting contradictory evidence caused by flaw; and people are notoriously prone to not reaching the correct conclusion when presented with contradictory evidence.
Well, the metaphor only goes so far. This process does not ask a person to explicitly apply what they learn in meditation. (If it did, the possibility for bias and error would be quite large, as with... (read 1034 more words →)
The model for higher stages of enlightenment is not one that I can fit into a blog post.
One reason is that I agree with what muflax said: the most-correct model I know of will have a fractal element, which will be hard to represent in a simple way. In my opinion, for the first four stages, this fractal element is less important. Afterwards, it's more important.
I don't think a model with a fractal element is necessarily the most useful one, though. I think a linear model (like the one I gave for the first four stages) can go pretty far. Problem is, I don't think the really important stuff that happens after... (read more)
Should be noted that I take Zoloft and Lamictal in case those are influencing any of this.
Before you continue with this, I'm formally recommending that you run what you're doing by your doctor and get your doctor's permission before you do it.
Not because I think this practice is (or isn't) going to be problematic for you, but because I don't know what your mental health situation is, and your well-being is important enough not to put solely in the hands of someone on the internet.
Also, I strongly suggest explaining what you're doing to a close friend, and having them check in with you every so often to make sure you're OK.
The rest... (read 480 more words →)
After concentrating a while on my abdomen a painful wave grips my attention and physically throws me off my meditation posture.
Try to observe that carefully every time it happens. You said that you can sometimes see negative feelings as mental objects and not "yours," so you're definitely on the right track. Consider ways that you may not be fully seeing them as mental objects. For example, are the negative feelings afflictions for you? How do you know? If you know because they feel as if they are, make sure you recognize the feeling "being afflicted by negative feelings" or the impression "having negative feelings present in my experiential field" as a mental... (read more)
Well, not having conscious experience isn't like anything. It just seems to me that being asleep is like something.
Not along the lines of having a sense that time is passing (one only seems to have that sense after waking up, so it's really "having a sense that time passed," as if the brain has some kind of built-in chronometer), but in having some kind of experience that can't be described normally.
Please let us know how meditation is going for you once your retreat is over.
It sounds like you may be describing vibrations, in one sensory modality only. What do you mean by "nothing"? Absense of a tingle? Absense of all physical sensation?
Physical sensations are a good place to look for vibrations because there are a lot of physical sensations that everyone seems to recognize are made up of fluctuating stuff. Most people are more attuned to this kind of fluctuation than to fluctuations in other modalities. Vibrations in other modalities are actually kind of similar, except that they don't "tingle", they just...fluctuate. Maybe tingling is a good metaphor for that.
Two main possibilities that I see:
1) Your concentration is relatively good, and when it gets to a... (read 418 more words →)
The world does, subjectively, appear to be enormously fresh and interesting to me (compared to before I went down this particular path), which may be related to what you read.
This post is the second in a series; you can read the first here.
I have already given a brief overview of what the goal of a particular style of meditation is, and why some individuals in this community might find it beneficial to pursue. The basic structure of this article will be as follows: a brief restatement of my major claims, a highly abridged history of meditation in one Buddhist-associated tradition and of models of the path towards enlightenment (from its ancient Buddhist roots to the modern day), and then a short-but-explicit set of instructions which an interested individual can use to see for themselves whether this style of meditation leads to... (read 7787 more words →)
For millennia, the practice of meditation has been deeply intertwined with many of the world's major and minor religious and spiritual traditions, as a technique aimed as everything from developing magical powers to communing with gods and demons. By contrast, during the last few decades in the West, enthusiasts have promoted meditation (along with a variety of its secularized offshoots) as a good way to cultivate relaxation, creativity, and psychological self-improvement in the context of our hurried and stressful lives. Because of this variegated cultural history, it's no surprise that many people see it as either as an exercise that leads to irrationality and madness, or as a harmless but questionably-effective pop... (read 4855 more words →)
The first paragraph isn't about vibrations. That's just visual junk. Looking at it closely will make vibrations apparent.
The second paragraph sounds like it's about vibrations. The rapidly-changing graininess is overlaid by another pulse, yes? How do you know that it's a pulse, unless you can almost-sort of see the fluctuation from "nothing" to "something" to "nothing"? (In stage 2 the "something" is clearest, so don't expect the "nothing" to be overwhelming.)
If you can't label "pulse" or "seeing" fast enough, try "that." If you still can't do it fast enough, simply see the vibrations without being distracted, or count them. Balance just seeing with labeling if distraction is a problem. Re-read my stage 2 advice in the post.
I'll be away for a few days, starting now, so you're on your own for awhile. Sounds like you'll be fine.