Coraline

Generally speaking, I would say, I am a more anxious human being. A few days after going to my second 10 days meditation retreat, I got in a very stressful situation and experienced a ridiculously conscious panic attack. Somehow this panic attack ended with finding myself in a very strange situation. Everything was different. At this moment, I did not know, what I was experiencing. First I thought: "Maybe I just became enlightened! " But after some time passed in that state, I realized that I will not be able to life my life like this. I would not be able to interact with other beings. I would not even be able to keep myself alive, because I would never know whether I am hungry, cold, tired... I realized: this can not be enlightenment. Fortunately, a friend helped me to go back to the ordinary state. He kept stressing that I have to want to go back to get my sensations and emotions back. I think he was right. The state itself lastet for about 4 to 5 hours. A day after, I found on the internet, what happened to me. And I am very sure about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization I do not really want to go back to that state. But I think, becoming more conscious, makes anxiety even stronger... And I do not think, I am able to control panic attacks or depersonalizations. Or do I? @Leo Gurakeeps saying that becoming anxious or even panicky is a part of self-inquiry. But I think at least depersonalizations would hold me back from the process. Any thoughts on this?

Hello, I would love some advice and sharing of experiences! A week ago, I was participating in my third Vipassana meditation retreat (as taught by Goenka). Somehow things became very weird and very different for me. I was really ambitious, because I did not want to fall into destructive thinking, so I even kept meditating (focusing on my breathing) in between meditation times. I remember my first "moment", when I started seeing patterns like psychedelic visuals on the walls and felt super happy and exited like a child. My meditations during the day and the days in general were super fine (despite mood swings: happy->excited->depressed->confused->anxious). An hour of meditation felt like 10 minutes. I saw lights and patterns (and did not react to them) and just enjoyed doing the body scan. However, at night times things became weird. For some reason I could not not meditate when I closed my eyes. I started feeling the energy in my body and often I felt some kind of force leading my attention, releasing energy from my body. I tried to resist, because I did not want to meditate so intense at night times and thought the order that force chose to go through my body was not right in terms of the Vipassana tradition. Like this, I always became really alert at night with a very strong heartbeat. If I did fall asleep, I experienced nightmares or dreams and hallucinations (I also hallucinated during the days from time to time). The most scary moment at night was, when I felt my body and realised that it was just pain, only pain in my whole body. (I thought "Wow, I never felt so much pain before" and started doing the Vipassana thing: feeling and not reacting). At some point however, I realised that I was not feeling my own real physical body, because when I pressed my fingers together, the feeling was different than this painful energy body. So I felt another body, a second body? this made me nervous and confused. Talking to the teacher, she fed into my worry and panic. When I told her that I was feeling a lot of stuff inside my body (the surface of the body is usually the object of meditation), she said that I should not do this as this is dangerous, because I could be confronted with things I could not handle. (New thought: I awoke things I cannot handle). Also, she said I should make sure to become calm and restful at night, because stress is very unhealthy (New thought: I should not have a strong heartbeat at night and need to try to get rest). I also talked about my pain body experience. Her reaction was that there are different ways to deal with it, but she cannot tell me about it, because "I was not there yet". Also, she advised my to go receive therapy after the course. Her words made me feel really insecure... I did not leave the course early, because I thought there was nowhere to go. Even if I stopped, the pain body was with me and I had neither the strength nor the technique to deal with it. I did talk to the management though about thinking that I should go to a mental hospital. They said it will be different after the course, I should not listen to my thoughts. I had one very extreme meditation during the day. Again, I had this force going through my body, wanting to go a different direction than I wanted (from head to feet, part by part). In the end, I gave in, stopped resisting and kind of just observed what was happening. I think the force went through my forehead and suddenly everything became light, then I saw a lot of nothing. I was nothing, there was nothing, at least no physical bodies. However, there were some red spots in this nothingnesss. I realised those red spots were part of my body. The force ignored a bunch of these red spots and went to one, that I identified as my heart. It was beating fast. Than it went to my lungs and made them contract and release two times. I felt incredibly good. I was just crying and feeling this ecstatic bliss. I interpreted afterwards that this experience wanted to show me that I should not fear my heart beating. Nevertheless at night, I was anxious about it again. When the retreat ended, I felt and was a different person. I felt like a child again. I had urges like hunger and thirst, I could barely resist or control. I could not listen to people when I did not care about what they said. I was extremely moody. I felt a lot of emotions coming up in my body as heat and pain, as if say had been stuck there. Because my world was so different, I wrote my identity on a paper to not loose myself. I tried to maintain equanimous. I felt like I needed to learn things new and some memories were lost like my pin code for my banking card. Those things came back slowly but gradually the days after the course. A lot of the things I experienced reminded my of the psychotic states of my friend who has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I feel fine and "normal" again. I stopped meditating as the teacher advised me to do. Only the memories are stuck in my head as thoughts that go in circles. I still experience difficulty sleeping, because of my fear of physical pain (or the pain body) causing me to feel pain at night (it is all in my head, I guess?). I feel that I would love some help and guidance, as I do not think family or friends or a GP will understand me so well ... Thank you for reading! I am happy to read your thoughts <3

Active like Yoga? I did some Systema last summer. Do you have other suggestions? Thanks for your suggestions. I try to keep the wisdom of anicca with me and it does help me.

Hey, I once made that commitment to not kill myself until I haven't tried anything possible on this planet that could lead to me being happy in/with life. This approach worked for me as a good compromise between my suicidal tendencies and that part in me that wants to change something. Suicidal tendencies have been with me for about seven years now. Finally, for about one and a half years, I am really making progress. I have these moments now where I am feeling so much love for myself and the whole existence that I just have to cry and want to apologise for not being able to see all this beauty inside and around me. But yeah, progressing means falling back not ones or twice but continuously and then you start again, always start again. It might not feel like it is worth anything in certain situations but when I see my development as a whole... I am actually at a point now where the past version of me could not even think about. And if something works for me, something will work for you as well. Maybe it is not the right way for you to try to feel better, to try to feel engaged in your life or your dreams. Maybe you can start to take action even though you do not care. It helped me to sometimes just not listen to my mind or my emotions and just do it (whatever it was at that moment, e.g. meditating, walking outside, meeting people) , even though these two sneaky parts of me were not really cool with that. But, you should not deny or pressure yourself. Follow your individual path, it is definitely there. You said that you got sad about your therapist saying that a person always is alone. In one video, Leo once said that when there is a theory (or thought) that definitely seems to be true but is not serving you (because it makes you depressed, inactive...), there is something about this theory that you do not understand yet. So, do not spend time ruminating about this too much. If this theory is true, one day you will understand it fully and see that there is actually nothing negative about it. I wish you all the best and send lots of love :-)

I eat vegan. There are lots of high protein plants (leguminous plants, nuts...). E.g. as a snack, I buy big packs of dried chickpeas (it is cheap) and I put them into water, after about 8 hours you can eat them just like that or you can even wait until they become germlings (is that the English word?). It feels like it makes them a little easier to digest.

Of course, different people are usually (more) interested in/fascinated by different things. But I suggest that mostly every topic can be studied from an intrinsic motivation point, because one can become highly interested in almost everything. Probably visualization can help you find that passion for a specific topic inside of you. There was also a study done with school children, where the children had to draw pictures. Those who expected a reward draw much shorter and with less passion than those who did not expect an outside reward. This would mean, that an extrinsic reward can shift your intrinsic motivation. http://fitaba.com/page16/assets/Overjustification Study - Lepper.pdf In your case the outside reward might be a grade or passing and getting the license. Maybe visualization is a tool to help you to find back to that intrinsic motivation. I think our society usually is about extrinsic rewards. And if you went to a public school, you learn to focus on these rewards, instead of being driven by your inner passion or creativity from a very young age. I don´t really know what your test is like, but maybe you can find a reason, how the theoretical knowledge might help you later during your work or even what you can learn from it for your life. Hope you had a good sleep! :-)

@Joel3102 Wow, thanks for sharing! There is not too much to find about that topic. Yes, I could handle two 10 days retreats, even though it was quite hard, but totally worth it. Weed never did anything good to me, so I avoid it, but I never had bad experiences with other psychedelics (while being in a save setting with familiar and nice people, of course). I am not sure, if I would be able to keep a depersonalization from happening through controlling my thoughts... There was the trigger and immediately the panic attack started and right after the DPD. I am not even sure, if I had any thoughts at all in between.

@pluto Interesting theory, but what about all these very simple, nonsense songs that you don´t even like?

@Joseph Maynor thanks for mentioning. I still remember that one time while meditating, when I first realized that weird piece of lyrics and melody in my head. Strange, artificial and so wrong in place. Somehow that realization followed me for days, making me feel like something else from outside is controlling all my thoughts and actions. Do you recommend not listening to music?

My first trip was with MDMA and I still think it is a very good starting point. It is so beautiful and kind and it totally opens yourself up to that whole new psychedelic world. While on LSD, time was not with me anymore. I was just somewhere else than time was until we met again in our usual dimension. Still, I am pretty sure, the trips never lasted for whole 12 hours. Anyway, you won´t regret spending the time.

Hey, I am glad you are here: tips, experience and thoughts appreciated. Within the last year I started building up a routine, it more or less goes like this: Getting up early, meditate, shower, breakfast, university, lunch, studying, dinner, this and that, going to bed early ... and than the circle starts over again. So, there are two points I am struggling with: 1. Whenever something interferes with my routine, I feel stress within myself. I feel the need to go back to that routine as soon as possible. Thoughts like "Shit, I still need to do my meditation", "So late already? I need to get my sleep!" will come up. I spot myself being really clingy to all that habits. I am sure the purpose of a routine is not to make you chasing your daily habits and making yourself stressed and nervous. 2. My routine sometimes feels way too "clean", too "robotic" to me. I mean, sure, I absolutely see the advantages I have due to my habits and schedule. But sometimes I miss the color, the easiness in it. I do not know how else to explain this. I feel like my routine is holding me back from really experiencing life to its fullest. Thanks for all your answers!

I am so happy everyone seems to really understand what I tried to explain! :-) I see that my problem is probably less about the habits themselves but more about my attitude towards them and the consciousness while doing them. A big barrier might be judgments and regrets... Being like water sounds so desirable! @Serotoninluv Wow, that sounds like an awesome trip though. A few days ago I had this little life crisis where nothing seemed to make sense to me anymore and I honestly just asked myself: "Why don´t I just go to South America and live there in a little hut in nature and just experience life from minute to minute?" @eye_wanderer That is a good idea. I just thought about five different places where I could go for studying. But I think, I did not get your point about the willpower completely. Maybe you can explain it a little further?

To me the key is observation. It is just because nothing else has ever worked for me. It is a very valuable knowledge to understand that in reality worth does not exist. But this knowledge might not help you with your problem unless it became a real insight. I do not think, you can forth this insight to happen within yourself on a level where you not only understand but feel that worth is nonexistent. Also, it is very important to see that the thoughts you have, influence the way you feel. But can you choose your thoughts? Can you control them? Most likely not. Who would choose a thought that says "You are worthless"? Or a thought that triggers a feeling of worthlessness? But you can definitely observe yourself. What thoughts come up in what situation? How do they make you feel? What are the sensations in your body? Try to really face your inner world. Try to keep that distance between what you are and the thoughts that arise. As already mentioned above, meditation is a good way to practice this. When you start to clearly see these self harming thoughts (literally as a voice in your head), you will be able to deal with them and see that they have no legitimate reason to be there. They will soon loose their power. Of course, patience is necessary, it will take some time. :-)