Meditation, Contemplation And Paranoia

[Ross]

Hey guys, I am just coming across a small problem with meditation and enlightenment. I have been doing meditation (do nothing and self inquiry simultaneously) for 1hr per day for a month. I am seeing some benefits but I just want to ask why I am getting more paranoid about people and my friendships!? Will this side effect of meditation go away?!

Thanks

[drelamore]

Elaborate more on that...

What does paranoid mean to you?

[Leo Gura]

If you're seriously getting on this journey towards enlightenment, you should expect the next 5 to 10 years of your mental life to be unstable and rocky. Lots of ups and lots of down. Lots of weird shit happening your head. Lots of doubt and confusion. Lots of frustration. Sometimes you're feel like you're going insane. It's all good. You're just breaking through all the ego's defense mechanisms.

This is all spiritual purification and a sign of true growth. The more suffering, the more purification.

[abrakamowse]

Don't pay attention to your thoughts. They are just that... thoughts. I had the same experiences like you, I was even in a mental hospital to realize that what drives us crazy is thinking our thought are ours, or come from us. 

They are not us, and they want to keep us slave to this fiction we are living, until we become enlightened.

[theinevitableandi]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you're seriously getting on this journey towards enlightenment, you should expect the next 5 to 10 years of your mental life to be unstable and rocky. Lots of ups and lots of down. Lots of weird shit happening your head. Lots of doubt and confusion. Lots of frustration. Sometimes you're feel like you're going insane. It's all good. You're just breaking through all the ego's defense mechanisms.

This is all spiritual purification and a sign of true growth. The more suffering, the more purification.

I've literally felt insane a couple of times and definitely have had very much frustration.  But now the frustration is mostly gone but there is still lots of weird shit going on in the mind , doubt and confusion have crept in so many times. I think  my mind has given up asking who I am or where i am because It noticed " I am " cannot be found / has no location / doesn't exist " i experience that feeling or sensing now. Thats the problem " I Think"... Even if i think I got it sometimes I know i don't have anything. As soon as I have it , immediately I know i don't have anything because it (TRUTH)cannot be grasped .  We are the truth and it is nothing... that is insane! Its literally nothing but you know that you exist. I'd like to see that person who knows you exist because i can't !!!  I dont know honestly . More Inquiry for sure . I've been at inquiry for one year and realized that i didn't really understand the questions that i was asking at first , so many traps!  

Edited February 25, 2016 by theinevitableandi

[Ayla]

@theinevitableandi

Your mind tricks you into believing that there is a "you" that is thinking something. In reality, thinking just happens. Have you noticed that thoughts come and go from/to nowhere? So the YOU that is perceived as a person (body/mind), cannot grasp (for long) that it does not exist. Because within the not existing, thinking cannot exist either. 

Those are only thoughts coming and going. Mind is dancing with those thoughts. Mind IS those thoughts. So remove the "I" from the "I think". Something is "being thought", but that is not you. Think about that process of thinking as a burning coal. As soon as there is thinking happening, drop it. Discard it as being all that you are not. No need to give it any attention. NONE! 

Another analogy that comes to mind: You can smell everything with your nose, but your nose cannot smell itself. Isn't that so? So every thing you can think of, perceive, imagine, dream, wish for, struggle with, hate, etc...is not you. Discard those. There's something that is witnessing all that. In the beginning of true finding, it can have a little bit of a "back" feel to it in the body/mind. That's another illusion but it is like seeing the gate already  

 

[theinevitableandi]

yeah i do realize that there is no thinker of thoughts... thoughts think other thoughts... I don't do any of it.. Im just here ( this here has no location )

The "I AM" that I AM witnesses everything.... every thought, feeling, sensation, ... And this Thing that i am... Is like a blank background that pics up all types of signals / data / thoughts / information/ feelings / sensations.... and this background blank thing is what i am , but it is nothing... and that is what i am... nothing... i know im it but i have no way of proving it , its just always here this knowing ... sounds like crazy talk! 

 

 

[Ayla]

10 minutes ago, theinevitableandi said:

I know I'm it 

This is a thought

11 minutes ago, theinevitableandi said:

i have no way of proving it

This is a thought

12 minutes ago, theinevitableandi said:

its just always here this knowing

This is a thought

12 minutes ago, theinevitableandi said:

sounds like crazy talk! 

This is a (funny but more true than others) thought 

 

[Study]

@Ayla So should I just drop all the thinking? (I can't actually drop everything but) just let the thoughts occur and stop thinking about who I really am? Thinking doesn't get you anywhere close to your true self anyways. Thinking about the natural of reality, self-inquires, contemplating on them, they will just create more thinking. These more thinking, they just get you to think closer to the "truth", insights. So you achieve "Right thinking" of the natural of reality and right thinking of natural of self. Enlightenment experiences happen when we drop all the thinking for a moment right? 

[Ayla]

@Study

1 hour ago, Study said:

Enlightenment experiences happen when we drop all the thinking for a moment right? 

Wrong

You should not believe any of your thoughts as saying something about you. Enlightenment is not a happening. It is who you already are. The one looking at those thoughts. The "I" dropping all the thinking is still a thought YOU see passing 

[A way to Actualize]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you're seriously getting on this journey towards enlightenment, you should expect the next 5 to 10 years of your mental life to be unstable and rocky. Lots of ups and lots of down. Lots of weird shit happening your head. Lots of doubt and confusion. Lots of frustration. Sometimes you're feel like you're going insane. It's all good. You're just breaking through all the ego's defense mechanisms.

This is all spiritual purification and a sign of true growth. The more suffering, the more purification.

Depends which way you want to take to enlightenment. Self-inquiry indeed has those things incuded...

There is a much more loving and casual way that causes only less suffering the more you say it, instead of more suffering. 

Choiche is yours. Or both.

[theinevitableandi]

12 hours ago, Ayla said:

This is a thought

This is a thought

This is a thought

This is a (funny but more true than others) thought 

 

i am not a thought.. i think im a thought.. conceptually i understand that the I " thinks it exists and its sounds like total bs though . ... thoughts are sensation that pops up on my radar... i am that radar... whos aware of the radar . I am...whos aware of that response..i get blank moments. Starting to see bigger gaps of no thought when I inquire.. 

[Huz]

@Leo Gura Would it be possible to share your instances with us. because at the moment thoughts are going haywire. There was one situation at a family dinner last weekend, when for no reason i had so much hate for my brothers girlfriend whom i love so much. The emotions felt so tense that i had to leave the room and just sit down for a bit to let it pass. Me being in the room with her would constantly fuel the fire. I have been currently doing and hour of the do nothing technique and an hour of contemplation. 

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you're seriously getting on this journey towards enlightenment, you should expect the next 5 to 10 years of your mental life to be unstable and rocky. Lots of ups and lots of down. Lots of weird shit happening your head. Lots of doubt and confusion. Lots of frustration. Sometimes you're feel like you're going insane. It's all good. You're just breaking through all the ego's defense mechanisms.

This is all spiritual purification and a sign of true growth. The more suffering, the more purification.

I am currently 19 studying maths and physics. Do you think this is a bad time to do this because unstability at this age could be detrimental to my future. I have periods when i feel so lost and bamboozeld in what i want to do in life, and have become distanace from my close firedns because now there is anxiety when i speak to them

[Ayla]

5 hours ago, theinevitableandi said:

i am not a thought.. i think im a thought.. conceptually i understand that the I " thinks it exists and its sounds like total bs though . ... thoughts are sensation that pops up on my radar... i am that radar... whos aware of the radar . I am...whos aware of that response..i get blank moments. Starting to see bigger gaps of no thought when I inquire.. 

The "trick" is not to stop them thoughts - nobody can for extended periods of time - but not to associate them with you, not believe they have anything to do with you. 

[Huz]

someone please help 

[Ayla]

1 minute ago, Huz88 said:

someone please help 

What is wrong ? 

[Huz]

2 minutes ago, Ayla said:

What is wrong ? 

ahh just at the moment have been feeling that i am losing everything good in my life, and theres no one around me to relate too

 

[Ayla]

3 minutes ago, Huz88 said:

ahh just at the moment have been feeling that i am losing everything good in my life, and theres no one around me to relate too

 

It is just a thought. Don't give it any attention.  It will pass. 

I highly recommend Noah Elkrief on youtube   

[Huz]

that is what i said before

 

@Leo Gura Would it be possible to share your instances with us. because at the moment thoughts are going haywire. There was one situation at a family dinner last weekend, when for no reason i had so much hate for my brothers girlfriend whom i love so much. The emotions felt so tense that i had to leave the room and just sit down for a bit to let it pass. Me being in the room with her would constantly fuel the fire. I have been currently doing and hour of the do nothing technique and an hour of contemplation. 

  On 2/25/2016 at 4:11 AM, Leo Gura said:

If you're seriously getting on this journey towards enlightenment, you should expect the next 5 to 10 years of your mental life to be unstable and rocky. Lots of ups and lots of down. Lots of weird shit happening your head. Lots of doubt and confusion. Lots of frustration. Sometimes you're feel like you're going insane. It's all good. You're just breaking through all the ego's defense mechanisms.

This is all spiritual purification and a sign of true growth. The more suffering, the more purification.

I am currently 19 studying maths and physics. Do you think this is a bad time to do this because unstability at this age could be detrimental to my future. I have periods when i feel so lost and bamboozeld in what i want to do in life, and have become distanace from my close firedns because now there is anxiety when i speak to them

[Frankie]

49 minutes ago, Huz88 said:

ahh just at the moment have been feeling that i am losing everything good in my life, and theres no one around me to relate too

You could question who is it who has this feeling? To whom it appears this way? Look deeply .... it depends on the feeling but some are just melting away under the light of awareness .....