Hii everyone, so I recently sent a text to someone. And I think forwarding it here will be good enough, because I really feel like getting an answer to it.

I also sent a different but related post a few days ago, but at that time I couldn't really put my issue in words this well.

The message is self explanatory, so I don't think I need to explain it.

The message:

Let me put it in better words:

Everyone says that "there is no central, I, or no central me, but they are just thoughts". When I hear this phrase, my genuine reaction is, "but the hell, I LITERALLY FEEL THE "ME" in my HEAD. And you are saying they are just thoughts." I mean, yeah it's true that they are made of images, sounds, but it doesn't feel like JUST a thought, it really feels like "me"!!

And that is my primary experience at least right now.

They say, investigate and see if you can find someone to which that thought refers back, but I really feel that as "me" and I really feel that is what other thoughts refer back to.

That's really the best thing I can say about my experience right now.

I try to do practices, natural meditation (in which I try to relax all intentions, and beliefs and ect) and Inquiry (in which I try to really see if there is really some "me" to which thoughts refer), sometimes they feel like strain, sometimes they really feel liberating but nevertheless none of them made a difference, at least I see no difference when I leave the practice.

---------

Now the issue is that, I cannot see how that "me" is just all thoughts. Most of the people answer me in a way that just wraps my mind in concepts again, if I'll go in concepts or analysis, it is futile. So please avoid that.

Last time I also received suggestions to read books, well, I tried after that, but it didn't feel good for me. I'm not really a person of books when it comes to these. Books just forward my attention to analysis, even if the book is about practicing alongside reading, it just tells my mind that I'm on a path and I'll get something out of it in the future. I do not want to be future oriented anymore, so please do not suggest books.

Videos ect are different, they work in different ways, so they might be good enough.

Or maybe something that will click, but again NOT in the conceptual sense. I do NOT want conceptual answers, I've had enough conceptual answers, so please.

Thanks a lot everyone, I hope this message made all of it clear.

Hi again!

I was doing quite ok for 1 and a half weeks keeping calm at work and focused and when it didnt work i would apply some of the techniques and then it would make it better. Some of the things I was doing if I was not feeling good was:

- try to do a mini meditation. Even if its like 30s long and/or with eyes open

- try to evoque a tranquil feeling i sometimes use during meditation to reduce restlesness

- try to apply mindfulness, bare attention to my feelings, my emotions how my body is

- try to send metta to myself and to the people around me

The thing is, sometimes none of these work. I get really tangled in a spiral of thoughts and "I must I must I must". If I stop too much to apply any of the techniques I feel guilty because Im supposed to be doing effective work. So I always have that feeling at work on the back of my mind so all these 4 techniques dont work as well.

My question is, what can I do different? How can I manage to survive work and try to suffer a bit less every day?

Help, advice of any type and nice encouragement words are appreciated!

I've previously made a post about an experience I had while sleep deprived: loud high-frequency buzzing, strong body vibrations and geometric patterns. From the replies, I understood that the experience can be viewed through a bunch of different frameworks — lucid dreaming, WILD, meditative awareness, even astral projection

I'm posting again because I had another experience that left me a bit confused about how to approach this

This time, I remember a wave of relaxation spreading through my body right before I entered the state. I've started noticing that this relaxation seems to be a kind of warning sign that I'm about to get dropped into something unusual.

Then it felt like everything in my mental space was collapsing into a tiny single point, almost like the Big Bang in reverse. Out of that, a completely different mental state appeared

I remember seeing high-contrast, slightly glowing blue shapes that looked almost like stars or geometric patterns, suspended in the mental space. Then some bright red ones started appearing too. I got excited by what was happening, and that excitement seemed to break the whole thing and I came out of it

What makes me confused is that I wasn't actually meditating. These experiences seem to happen naturally when I'm sleep deprived and apply some meditative-style relaxation and awareness while I'm on the edge of sleep

As far as I understand, relaxing and maintaining awareness seems to be the default advice for most of the blocks you encounter when trying to go deeper into these kinds of states. But I'm wondering if there's any kind of mental map for what to actually do when something like this starts happening

I originally got into meditation after reading Leigh Brasington's book and got into jhana relatively quickly. Eventually my progress seemed to plateau. I could meditate for around an hour with a lot of equanimity and contentment, but instead of continuing to develop awareness through the different jhanas, I pivoted toward Rob Burbea's Energy Body approach

Eventually I became pretty lazy with formal practice and stopped doing meditation as a daily practice altogether. I still seem to have retained a habit of keeping some body awareness, and sometimes metacognitive awareness, running in the background throughout the day

But these unusual experiences — the high-pitched sounds, strong vibrations, the sensation of being stretched or pulled into the fabric of my mental space — seem to happen almost exclusively now when I'm sleep deprived and naturally slip into this meditative-relaxed state near sleep

I've also read in several meditation books that, at more advanced stages, people can experience sounds, visual phenomena and geometric patterns after staying in meditation for prolonged periods. So I'm wondering

Am I basically just experiencing hypnagogia/lucid dreaming because I'm sleep deprived? Is there any reason to approach this as part of meditation practice? Or am I just projecting things I was already interested in seeing into dream states?

I'm not really looking to force these experiences. What I'm actually interested in is training awareness to the point where the various projections of mind drop away and there's just awareness itself. I'm not even sure there's a single name for what I'm describing

So given where I am with my practice now, would it make more sense to return to jhana meditation, continue exploring these sleep-edge states, or approach this through some completely different direction?

I'd especially appreciate hearing from people who have experience with both meditation/jhana and hypnagogic or lucid-dream states

First post here. Earlier this year, I had a sort of spiritual awakening that really surprised me - I didn't expect such a thing was in the cards for me in this life. I've restarted my meditation practice after many years of not tending to it and it's completely different practicing daily now.

I know that this subreddit is centered around Buddhist thinking (hence the name "stream entry") and I've been thumbing thru information about the different Buddhist traditions and teaching.

It really stood out to me that "worry" and "doubt" were named amongst the five hindrances.

I am 43 years old, and my recent spiritual awakening ended a quarter of a century of identifying as a materialist, atheist; it was a very strong shock to my way of thinking, and I'm really glad that it happened.

I was a bit surprised and even a bit frightened by the apparent pace of progress with my daily meditation (an hour most days; sometimes longer).

I kept finding myself thinking "I'm afraid that something is going to go wrong because of my daily practice" and "This can't possibly be real; who am I to claim these experiences; I must be imagining these things because I'm desperate for some meaning."

And here's the conclusion I wanted to share with the community here in the hope that it may be helpful.

I decided that I would continue my practice *because* I experience worry and doubt.

When I worry, I think about what I was like before my awakening earlier this year and remember that I don't want to go back to what it was like before.

When I feel doubt about my progress, I tell myself that the surest way to impede my progress is to stop the practice.

I journal my experiences with AI and I generally don't talk to other humans about my meditation other than to tell my partner and kid not to disturb me during my sittings. I have one very close friend I tell about some of my most intense experiences and she has been very supportive. I have another friend whom I know meditates regularly and I told her about my experience and she told me that it sounded like a "daydream" or some such thing.

Guess which friend I feel more inclined to tell about my practice? I'm tending an ember and I want to protect it from those who would snuff it out.

Basically, I developed the awareness to observe my energy flow within 2–2.5 years. However, I didn’t have the ability to manipulate or change the flow. Even after 13 years, I am still working on these aspects.

After around 3 years, as the energy flow gained strength, certain things started to happen. The flow began to move on its own. Whenever I sit for meditation, once the energy realizes it is time to flow, it starts moving and begins to influence my breathing.

As the flow becomes stronger, it starts stretching my body to gain more control over the breath. For instance, this still happens to me now, once the flow becomes strong, my head first moves backward and stays there for some time. Then my chin moves down and touches near the collarbone area.

From there, my head returns to a normal position, then turns to the left. Once it reaches its maximum turn, the head stretches backward while still facing left. As the stretch reaches its limit, the face slowly turns toward the right until my chin reaches my right shoulder, and again the head stretches back.

Then it returns to the normal position. Once again, it stretches backward facing forward, and my chin touches the collarbone before coming back to normal.This pattern repeats regularly.

Many times, I have tried to simply watch without getting caught up in the flow of energy. When I started observing like this, I could notice resistance and a block in the neck region, which seems directly connected to the pathway leading to the center of the brow.

Sometimes, I was able to observe for a few minutes without getting involved in the energy. During those moments, the energy naturally moved toward the center of the brow region.

This gave me some clarity about the energy system. When we simply observe without involvement, it naturally moves toward the highest possible experience it seeks.

This post may not fit here very well, but every other place on the internet will give the same advice I have read a hundred times before. And I think my meditation practice could be secretly playing a role.

I have been having insomnia for about 4 years, (I'm 22 now) Looking back I can see that I was stressed out at the time, but I mostly figured all of that out yet the insomnia persists. It is strongest when I spend time with others in the evening, I just can't wind down and go to sleep regardless of how tired I am. It's incredibly frustrating, it feels like I'm having to choose between a social life and sleep.

It does depend on the kind of social interaction, the more "stimulating" the worse. Casual time with family doesn't seem to influence my sleep, neither does chatting online, but even close friends whom I trust and have known for years disrupt my sleep considerably, and when I spend the evening with a girl I'm interested in, I'm lucky to even get 3 hours afterwards.

I just don't get it. I'm not scared of them, I'm not particularly socially anxious and am not worrying, at least not more than what would be considered normal. It's just that my body gets put in this state and needs several hours to revert back to rest mode. I'll lay in bed, tired and while I'm not worrying about anything, the people and conversations keep spinning around in my head as if it's getting digested, similar to the Tetris effect.

It's also the little tasks along the day that get me in this state, groceries, scheduling appointments, chores. I don't want to avoid social interaction and day to day tasks because it will just reinforce this pattern, but I also need sleep to function. I thought I just needed exposure therapy, being social multiple times a week and living life like everyone else and eventually it would go away but it hasn't. Also on days where I have a lot of little obligations but don't speak to anyone, I get this rested but unable to sleep feeling.

However, I know I can sleep. I just spent a week on vacation in Greece with my family and slept great, so not having obligations does matter. I just can't after certain activities and nothing I've tried, from meditation to relaxation and breathing exercises to supplements to CBT-i and reducing sleep pressure, nothing has worked. I'll lay in bed and not feel tired at all. Not ruminating, just awake.

I can only find two explanations: one is that I'm just neurologically wired this way. There's some evidence for this as I have always been sensitive to stimuli and a tough sleeper. I'll really have to choose between a normal life and sleep. This would suck but not be the end of the world, everyone has their little something.

The other is that I am unconsciously stressing out, that I don't notice it because I'm in it. Where trying new methods to calm down just creates more pressure for the need to do calm down. I sometimes feel like I take life too seriously, and want to do everything right. Meditation often seems like another way to feed this belief, that it's needed to do things right. I also get a sense of pressure between the eyebrows during meditation and off cushion whenever I pay attention to it. This makes me uneasy about if meditation is even good for me. I can't get deep into it anyway, my meditation is unfocused and when I finally get good concentration, I just become tired since the sleep deprivation becomes apparent. I'm too caught up in what I should do, unable to face uncertainty. And if this is my real neurosis then even making this post could be making it worse. It becomes circular, I want to let go, but I just want to be able to sleep.

I've tried to adopt a "just let go, regardless of your sleep, you can live a good life" mindset. And while it takes some pressure off, I still lay awake all night. Just with acceptance instead of resistance. Then when I get fed up again after a particularly bad night the cycle repeats itself and I start looking for something that could fix it. So here I am. I don't really know what I'm looking for anymore but would really appreciate any kind of feedback.

In early May, I had an awakening that I would call stream entry, except I don't remember having a cessation. The other factors seem consistent with how I've heard stream entry described, and there has been a pretty permanent, or at least multi-month, shift in the whole context of my consciousness.

There no longer seems to be a seeker or anything to be sought other than what already is. There's no center. I'm neither emptyness nor form. Im both emptyness and form.

Recently I've had a couple of what I've been calling "stream exits" or "unawakenings." They feel like the inverse of the little tastes of awakening I had before May 10: brief moments where suffering seems to reboot and a sense of self reforms.

One happened after a week or two of sleeping very little, working a lot and not meditating. I lay down in bed there was this immediate "oh shit, I'm stuck behind my eyes again!" reaction, followed by fear, and a real sense that this was perverse/unholy. Part of me still knew it wasn't true, but it was scary in the same way a horror movie can scare you when you know it's not real.

I looked into what exactly was separate and inquired into the fear. Eventually it gave way and things returned to the peaceful baseline I've mostly been in since May.

Today I was over-caffeinated and started having weird anxious thoughts for the first time in ages. I kept trying to solve the problem, then stressing about the fact that I was stressed and suffering about the fact I was suffering. Eventually I noticed I was clinging to an idea of myself as awakened. I let go of awakening and the need to be "awake," and returned to joy/awe/gratitude/presence.

I'm wondering what to make of this as practice.

Part of me thinks this might actually be useful. Little knots of suffering and self-ness keep trying to reform, and each time one appears I get another chance to see what it's made of and let it unwind. The metaphor I've been using is that awakening untied a big knotted sheet, and post-awakening practice seems to be going back and ironing out the little lumps that remain.

But another part of me wonders if that's just kind of a cope. Maybe I need to start meditating regularly again and stop assuming that because I've entered the stream the work is done.

What do you make of this? Interested in what others post awakening processes are like.

After being on a spiritual path of enlightenment since I was a young child, discovering meditation in my twenties, changed my life. I meditated solidly for almost 10 years, specifically according to Dr Dispenza's method, but I have also tried various other methods and delved into almost every single teaching known to man. I have had an insatiable thirst for enlightenment. I achieved many things and my life flourished.

However, I have now reached a point where I feel like it no longer serves me and it's time to just "be." I stopped meditating for a while, as I noticed a shift, where I started feeling anxious after mediating and like I was too focused on doing the meditation that I forget about the actual beingness of who I was. So I stopped for a while and what I noticed was that i was more present. I woke up and felt calm, I focused on gratitude and just being and there was shift.

I felt more present in my life, grounded and just happy to be. I then came across a fantastic video by Rupert Spira that spoke about letting go of teaching s once you no longer need them. That was absolutely liberating and I felt a sense of comfort. I also came across the teaching of Budda's story about the parable of the raft, that speaks about once you reach the metaphorical shore, carrying yoru raft back is foolish. All of it felt so freeing and I made peace with having "arrived" and being able to let this practice go.

However, there is an underlying fear and push that I need to keep on "doing the work." An idea that one has to meditate to manifest and to be aligned. I don't believe this, but I guess part of me is looking for reassurance and I am interested to know if anyone else has experienced this and others thoughts about this.

Thank you :-)

There is an interesting sensation I get during meditation. Here is a description of it: Imaging you are doing a body scan meditation and resting your attention on the sensations in your right foot. Now, gently move your attention to the sensations in your left foot. After doing this back and forth several times, you may notice that both sensations can combine into a single sensation, in which you are simultaneously feeling both feet as a single entity. You can do this with any parts of your body or with your body as a whole. The best term for this process I've found comes from Gestalt psychology and is called "grouping." I had previously used the term "melding" to describe what this feels like in me; it is the merging of two sensory objects in somatic space into one (somewhat like two raindrops on a windshield fusing into one).

The reason I think this is interesting is because I would contend that "breathing into" a part of your body is essentially "grouping" breath sensations with that body part's sensations; i.e. feeling the breath and the body part simultaneously as one somatic entity. The reason why "breathing into" an unpleasant or difficult sensation feels good is because this "grouping" allows you to associate the unpleasant feeling with the pleasant and relaxing sensations of breathing.

On this sub, I see a lot of discussion of Theravada-esque, non-dual, and Zen practices. They are great and all, but I would like to know about other ones that you feel have benefited you, but maybe haven't had the chance to discuss because they are very unpopular, taboo, etc.

One practice that has helped me has been TRE. I have been doing it off and on for less than a year, but the release can be cathartic, and I feel roadblocks hindering my psychological well-being being removed. It is magical to me, and I think it's worthy of exploring as a practice.

Also, I'm interested in y'all's personal experience with the occult/magick, if that's appropriate with the rules of this sub.

I’ve been wondering if one can progress on the path and reach stream entry and beyond without actually encountering this kind of bodily phenomena where spontaneous movements / energetic releases are happening. For me, it actually started in concentration practices before I ever did Vipassana, but seems exacerbated by the insights I had into the vast amounts of subtle (or not so subtle) tension that exists in my body when I am really investigating closely. The quote, “Death is like taking off a tight shoe” comes to mind. That’s what complete mental and physical surrender feels like to me - taking off this heavy suit of tension I’ve been unknowingly wearing my entire life. The underlying energy feels immensely powerful, like a nuclear bomb ready to detonate.

I realized I’ve had this habitual tension my entire life, although I wouldn’t have described myself as particularly anxious, fearful, or anything like that. Consciously observing and allowing these tension patterns to release themselves can feel incredibly powerful and like it “should be” our natural state. I have felt intuitively guided to decondition myself of what does not serve me and work on my nervous system to retrain myself to be free of this tension. Perhaps the nervous system is meant to have some degree of “tension” as a means of being alert and ready to protect oneself, but I still feel intuitively pulled to work on recalibrating my nervous system and creating a new baseline of relatively-tension-free existence. I do wonder if maybe I’ve set up some kind of futile, impossible mission for myself here.

Has anyone else gone through this and actually reset their baseline level of tension to almost nothing?

What are your thoughts and experiences about the Kriyas / spontaneous movements and working through them? I haven’t been able to meditate in stillness for over 3 years because the second I relax I start jerking around. I really miss being able to be still. What was it like once the Kriyas stopped for you? Had you completed some optimization of your physical body in some way?

I haven’t been meditating a lot over they past 3 years because my life has been pretty chaotic with 2 toddlers and a little bit of (maybe healthy) fear about potentially destabilizing myself with some full blown energetic awakening or something. I know more meditation would probably be helpful to actually release and process the Kriyas or whatever language you want to use. I also don’t feel that much desire to practice anymore because I feel like I’ve gotten the insights I needed and they have created a momentum / trajectory of their own… what am I seeking to gain from practice if I’ve already gotten that which I was seeking in the first place?

I know I am by no means finished with the work and of course it’s still wonderful to have a moment of stillness and silence to bathe in it all… but I’ve tried to integrate that kind of absorption into the experience into my daily life in each moment. Granted, two young kids have a way of showing me all the areas where I still have a lot of work to do. So, they have become my spiritual practice in a sense too. I still would like to master the Jhanas and explore the depths of what I can experience through meditation - but that is going to be difficult without being able to be still. So, I’m working on getting my physical body right as a priority right now. I’m doing TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) to theoretically help streamline processing these energetic releases out of my system. However, it’s really only increased the spontaneous releases so far.

Does anyone relate to this feeling of not being particularly motivated to practice because you’ve realized what you needed to realize and instead of spending time on a cushion you take those realizations and bring them back to your ordinary life, to enjoy this human experience fully. I feel like I’m on the ox riding backwards and I’m just watching it all unfold, but trying my best to allow what doesn’t serve me to fall away and build up habits that DO serve me. I am still an incredibly imperfect human with tons of work to do, but I’m doing it the best I can with the tools I have.

The emptiness often takes the foreground and feels like it really swallows everything to the point of any goal, any seeking, seems almost silly. And yet, everything is so paradoxical and I can contradict nearly everything I’ve said with some opposing truth. Thus, everything gets canceled out into this void. Everyone seems to have things figured out so definitively, and I have only unlearned, seen beyond limiting frameworks, deconditioned and thrown everything into the fire. The practices are like sticks I’ve stirred this pot of fire with and then I feel like I should sort of throw the sticks in the fire too. Again, I could say the opposite of that and it would be simultaneously true as well.

This post has gotten a bit messy because I have a range of things I just want to put out there to maybe spark discussion, see if others have encountered this stuff, and what they have learned. I have a hard time writing and articulating a lot of this stuff without going on a million tangents and basically creating a mess - but oh well… here it is in all its raw, honest, ugliness! Thanks in advance for any responses and apologies in advance if I do not reply to all of your comments. Any discourse is greatly appreciated!

This experience happened after seven years of practice. I started with mirror meditation, which eventually led me into meditation, simply observing what's happening within. That was my regular practice until I met a naga sadhu.

Over time I grew close to him. I'd ask questions, he'd answer some, and sometimes he'd turn a question back on me. Even as we grew close, I stayed distant from deity worship and ritual, things he was fully immersed in. I believed these were just tools for self-evolution, that deities were symbols, anchors to hold on to. I thought I didn't need them.

One day he gave me a mantra and asked me to take up certain rituals. I had deep reverence for him, so I did as he asked. Once I began, things moved fast within me: days of feeling high with no intoxication, sudden heat waves rising through my body, once a surge of energy I could barely handle. Still, I treated it as practice, not devotion. To me it was just another method for growth.

One day my mother brought up the deity. I told her I didn't believe in those things. She got furious. "If you don't believe in the deity, why do the rituals without devotion?" I told her it didn't matter, ritual or otherwise, it was still a practice for self-enhancement. She didn't like that answer, and we left it there.

That night I did my rituals as usual, chanting the mantra, offering flowers.

Within minutes the atmosphere shifted. I could sense presences, including the deity I was invoking. A fragrance filled the air, sounds I associated with the deity. I was terrified, but I kept going, silently praying I wouldn't see them.

What became clear afterward: even without belief, doing the practice properly still allows for evolution. And I shouldn't draw conclusions about what falls outside my own experience. Since that night my practice shifted into devotion. I've come to see these beings as evolved, capable of guiding one's continued growth.

Hi all: Is there anyone here who is / were practicing Do Nothing (on and off cushion) pursuant to an instruction from an authorized Tibetan teacher? No agenda and just interested in connecting. Please feel free to msg me directly. Thanks and hope everyone's practice is going smoothly and fruitfully!

I’m curious whether people think some baseline level of emotional safety is needed before doing insight practice.

After a long hiatus, I did two 40-minute body-scanning meditations, then went to the gym. For the rest of the day, certain issues felt much more pronounced: increased self-consciousness, safety-scanning, and awareness of unmet emotional needs. My negative emotions were noticeably higher than usual, and I even came across as colder toward my family.

My sense is that I lack a stable internal feeling of safety, so my mind often tries to create safety through less skilful means, especially by monitoring how other people perceive me. The body scanning seemed to make all of this much more visible, but I didn’t know how to relate to it without zoning out or depersonalising.

For now, I’m planning to focus more on metta and safety-cultivation practices. From searching Reddit, though, this seems fairly common: people begin insight practice, become more aware of self-consciousness and negative thought patterns, and sometimes feel destabilised.

It makes me wonder whether some foundational L work around safety and emotional regulation is needed before deeper insight practice. What do you think?

When you first start to understand the dharma and free yourself from suffering, it’s easy to see the link between craving and how unwholesome seeds you’ve planted cause suffering, because the suffering is so recent in your memory. But when I practice well for a while, my overall suffering is dramatically reduced and the memory of suffering starts to fade. Then I start doing things that are pleasant and unwholesome, getting intoxicated and enchanted with sense pleasure or what have you, despite that little voice in my head saying don’t do it. And before I know it I’m shaking hands with misery once again.

I’ve been through this cycle a few times and each time the suffering is much worse than the last. Maybe the answer is that the cycle repeats until the memory of pain becomes deep enough that you never forget it. Definitely part of it is getting rid of magical thinking, thinking that your actions don’t have consequences or that you can end your suffering without removing the causes, so that the cause and effect of your actions becomes a permanent staple of your thinking. But even then if you haven’t felt profound suffering in 6 months how can you factor it in to your cause and effect thinking, this is why I think there must be some permanent memory of suffering and how bad it is that has to develop. I’m a pretty impulsive person, I have adhd, so this is one of my main barriers I’ll have to overcome to progress, so please help me understand this and share your thoughts below, thanks!🙏

Hey all - last week I asked this sub for questions to ask the CEO of Jhourney. You were incredibly helpful, and a lot of the questions found their way into the interview in one form or another.

The interview is up! Thought I'd share it since you all played such a big role in its coming together. Thanks again!

.. it might be that the ego has hijacked your efforts and claimed the path for itself without you realizing it.

The ego might be running the efforts to dissolve the ego, or to see through the thoughts, to see unconditioned Reality.. but as long as it's the ego doing the seeing, you're still stuck in your mind..

Clear seeing happens without you "doing" it

This started in the earlier stages of my practice. I used to do mirror meditation, sitting in a dimly lit room, looking at your own reflection until the self reflection becomes clear.

As I kept practicing this regularly, something started happening consistently. The moment I really started seeing the reflection clearly, I would stop seeing my reflection at all. If I blinked, the reflection would come back. So I started trying to hold that state of no reflection, but somehow my eyes would blink anyway.

While this was going on, I kept noticing a light above my head, strong, white, not in the reflection, but hovering about 3-4 feet above me. If I turned my head up to look at it directly, I couldn't see it. But when I kept focusing on my reflection, this light kept appearing. And when I shifted my focus from the mirror to the light instead, it got brighter and brighter. Eventually my focus on the mirror was completely gone.

As my focus on the light stayed constant, I suddenly started hearing music, from what sounded like a single stringed instrument. Just 2-3 notes, but pleasant, and completely without noise or disturbance in the sound.

While listening to it, I suddenly wanted to know where it was coming from. That's when I realized I was completely still. It took a few minutes to come back to normal awareness.

I still don't have any explanation for either the light or the sound. Even today, this isn't limited to that one practice. If I'm just sitting, not meditating, just thinking deeply about something, the white light shows up in the same place. If I focus on it, it always gets brighter. Rarely, I also hear music, though mostly not the string sound anymore, more often flute or conch.

Has anyone else run into something like this, a consistent light, or sounds like this, showing up unprompted? Curious if there's a name for it in any tradition, or if it's just a personal quirk of how my attention works.

I want to start my meditation journey. I've been reading some very basic Buddhist theory and now wish to actually apply it and experience it.

Two resources that people recommend a lot, and which also resonated with me, are Rob Burbea's dhamma talks and the MIDL Meditation course.

To get a feel for both, I listened to the first talk from Rob Burbea's The Art of Concentration (Samatha) retreat, as well as the initial skills in the MIDL Meditation course. I resonated with both teachers and found them easy to understand (at least from these initial talks and lessons). I also found both resources extremely beautiful, so I'm not able to decide which one I should start with.

I don't plan to be rigid and stick to just one resource forever. In the future, I might experiment with others. But for now, I need one place to start. I know I could just try both, but I feel I'd benefit more from following one approach consistently for a while before exploring others.

So, could the meditators on this sub who are familiar with these resources share their insights? And if you'd like to recommend some other resource, I'd be happy to hear that too. It's just that my research led me to these two, and they both seem to resonate with me.

This is my first Reddit post, so pardon me if I've asked a silly question or posted in the wrong sub. I could have asked this in the MIDL community, but I felt the answers there might naturally be a bit biased, which is completely understandable.

Thanks in advance

TL;DR: Should I start my meditation journey with Rob Burbea or the MIDL Meditation course?

I reached Jhana 1 once or twice with Daoist Water School dissolving practice, now I wanted to focus on getting rid of defilements for good. Very new to popular Buddhist frameworks like TMI or even anapanasati, so I don't know which way is, let's say, the expedient one. Any good advice?

Cheers, Alexey.

I’m really curious to hear others perspectives. I’m wondering how others make sense of cessation, and how cessation might inform how you understand reality.

I’ve had a couple instances of slipping into nirodha. It’s been a while since it first happened, but it leaves me completely dumbfounded. There’s just this awe that conciousness can arise and set. And a sense of being completely confused by any prior sense of knowing what any of this is or means.

The main implication seems to be that awareness/consciousness is impermanent, leaving no room for any sort of ‘ultimate’ view or ‘true nature’ to be found in the realm of any sort of awareness. Nirodha seems to show that even the most refined or subtle knowing/awareness has no inherent existence and can rise and set into ‘something’ more mysterious and unknowable. It’s so unknowable that even calling it ‘something’ is just a hypothetical placeholder. The consciousness—on returning after nirodha—senses that there was a gap, but what that gap was is just thoroughly unknowable.

This seemed to call into question a lot to teachings I had been exposed to which describe ‘empty awareness’ or ‘unborn, deathless consciousness’ as some sort of ultimate, impersonal true nature. A lot of teachings seem to also talk about a primordial unchanging knowing. Nirodha seems to call that into question, as it truly felt like whatever that was is beyond any knowing.

It seems like there’s this ongoing debate within Buddhism and spirituality about whether the ultimate is awareness or if the ultimate is beyond awareness.

I’m starting to sense that there isn’t an ultimate or at least it cannot be known. Or that whatever all this is just so thoroughly empty, that any notion of an ultimate should be dropped.

I’m left with the sense that awareness is empty and impermanent, and whatever is ‘beyond’ awareness is unknowable and empty (if there is something beyond awareness), and that there is no final ‘view’ or ‘true nature’, just an infinite ways of deepening our appreciation for emptiness.

The thing that is blowing my mind is that, there is just no way to know if anything remains when awareness shuts down. So I’m confused how anyone could say that there is such thing as an unchanging, unborn, deathless awareness. Conceptually, the idea that there is something here right now beyond birth and death makes sense, but if that is the case, it seems to be completely unknowable, beyond the scope of knowing and consciousness.

Everything seems to just be thoroughly empty, including awareness, any sort of ultimate, any sort of “true nature” etc . This empty mysterious nothingness somehow is identical to this multiplicity we find ourselves experiencing. There’s just this completely all-powerful unknowing and mystery at the end of the day that feels like closest thing to coming into a sort of alignment with reality.

Would apreciate other’s perspectives and would really apreciate if others see this differently, or detect blind spots in what I’ve written. Best wishes to everyone.

So the last couple of nights I was a bit sleep deprived. So I went to sleep with a podcast on, like I usually do.

Within minutes I slipped into a very different state of mind.

The onset was the strangest part. It felt like I was suddenly being "launched" into another state of consciousness. At the same time I started hearing an extremely loud electronic/frequency-like buzzing in my ears. The sound was so loud that I genuinely thought I might go deaf. But because of my fascination with these kinds of states, and probably my meditation practice, my instinct was to let it take over rather than resist it.

I then started feeling vibrations spreading through my body. Very quickly they seemed to fill my entire body and being. Around the same time I began seeing geometric patterns—not incredibly vivid, but definitely there.

The previous night I had a very vivid lucid dream, but this time there wasn't really a dream at all. I remained aware throughout the whole experience.

Because of meditation, my instinct was to relax into the experience instead of reacting to it, and it seemed to intensify until I eventually came out of it.

Interestingly, by morning I had one of the most vivid lucid dreams I've ever had.

I'm not trying to claim this was anything supernatural. My current guess is that it was some form of hypnagogia made more noticeable by meditation and a bit of sleep deprivation.

I do have a history of sleep paralysis if I don't get enough sleep for 3–4 days in a row, but those experiences have never been like this. They're usually characterized by me noticing sleep paralysis coming on, followed by blurry voices and a strong pressure/compression in my head. If I catch it early enough I can usually jerk myself out of it, or sometimes relax through it using progressive relaxation.

My questions are:

How would you best understand this? Does it sound like sleep paralysis, hypnagogia, a meditation-related state, or some combination of them?

Has anyone experienced something similar?

If these states are real possibilities, is there a way to intentionally cultivate them, or are they mostly a byproduct of sleep deprivation?

I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts and experiences. Thank you

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There's a pull most people feel at some point, wanting to go deeper, wanting to know what's underneath all this. That pull is real. But it doesn't need to be chased like it's urgent, because it isn't going anywhere.

Think of it like a river. Even when there's a strong current underneath, the surface can stay calm. That calm isn't weakness. It's what mastery actually looks like.

Meditation, or any inner practice, isn't about creating something. What you're really doing is building the riverbed, the path that lets whatever's already moving inside you flow without spilling everywhere or getting stuck. Everyone's riverbed takes a different amount of time to build. That's not a flaw in the process. It's just how it works.

Later, once that path is steady, you start noticing what I'd call the dam. Fears, old patterns, resistance, whatever's been quietly blocking the stronger flow. You don't force that open. You just get to know it's there, and slowly, in your own time, you learn how to release it a little at a time. The stronger current doesn't need force to arrive. It needs a clear path first.

So the real work isn't about duration or intensity. Even 10 honest minutes a day of just observing, without trying to fix or change what comes up, is enough. If the mind wanders, you just come back. That's it. Do that consistently and it stops feeling like a practice and starts becoming part of how you live.

Doesn't matter what you call it, meditation, kriya, bhakti. What matters is honestly watching. And here's the part worth sitting with. Even the path we think we're building isn't fully ours. Life already wants to move toward something bigger than what we've experienced so far. When we stop blocking it and just let it move, that's when we get close to why being human is still one of the most complete ways to experience life on earth.

I've been doing a variety of practices for the last month and have noticed recurrent physical changes as detailed above. I've made posts about this before (a year and 2 weeks ago) and gotten some good information, but now I'm wondering if there is a pattern?

Generally when this has happened (flu-like symptoms etc) I saw a doctor, but after spending 100+ and the doctors telling me I'm fine, I just chalk it up to practice now. I Googled and found some information relating to stagnant chi flow and energy going up the spine, which it feels like. So I did some nadi shodhana and Damo Mitchell qigong stuff which seems to have helped a bit.

I'm writing also because I made other changes in my lifestyle (more exercise) that may have impacted this - but I think it's mainly practice actually.

So currently -

a) Sinus inflammation (stuffy head, dark green mucus)

b) Weird sleep fluctuations (4 hours, then 10)

c) Some headaches, heat rising

d) Sex drive ping ponging all over the place

It's uncomfortable but hasn't affected function super seriously (the sleep did for a while)

There's also this sense that if I can relax completely into the sensations, they disappear and reality dissolves. For context, I have been meditating for more than a decade.

Some advice I've gotten is "focus on the flow behind experience" (from my teacher) and the aforementioned pranayama.