SCARY no self experience

[Moment]

what is up guys

I have contemplated allot about "no self" these last weeks and while I was just doing my ordinary meditation practice before bed, something scary happened. I was focusing very deeply on the space behind my eyes and I kept surrendering the thoughts that was appearing in my consciousness. I just kept surrendering thoughts and I went deeper and deeper into awareness, and slowly began to identify as the witness. As I was doing this, my heart rate was speeding up. But quite suddenly I got the feeling of disappearing, and I felt and that there was literally nothing behind my eyes, and that there was no one in this body. I know conceptually that no self is the truth but the slight direct experience of it FREAKED me out! I stopped the meditation practice and opened my eyes. but the feeling of being empty inside was still there and this was when I got really scared. At this point my body was shaking and I had to get up form bed to ground myself. irrational thoughts about going crazy was running through my mind, and It felt like I was inducing some sort of a panic attack, instead of a profound insight. 

In retrospect, it has become quite clear to me that what I was experiencing was just my ego resisting what was happening. I guess what I don’t understand is why does my heart begin to beat fast? And what will I find on the other side if I push trough this panic?  is this what I have to go through in order to have and Enlightenment experience? 

Any thoughts guys?

Appreciate it

Edited May 22, 2018 by Moment

[tsuki]

Calling yourself crazy over it is a classic reaction.
Fear of insanity is a powerful tool of homeostasis.

I've been there. Going crazy is so much fun.
It is to see how crazy it is that everybody pretends to be normal.

Congratulations! Keep it going!

[Truth Addict]

I also have many panic attacks almost every day, many times a day, during sleep too (the strongest and scariest panic attacks). I feel like I'm going to die, but my ego does not want to surrender because I fear death, because I still have some beliefs about death. 

Anyone familiar with my case?

[Moment]

@Truth Addict nope, I cant relate to that. If you have panic attack everyday i think its time to see a doctor 

[Truth Addict]

15 minutes ago, Moment said:

@Truth Addict nope, I cant relate to that. If you have panic attack everyday i think its time to see a doctor 

 

Panic attacks during the day only occur when I think about no self and stuff (my bad I didn't mention that earlier). Other than that everything is quite normal, and I do exercise on a regular basis (60 to 75 mins a week), and everything is fine.

During sleep, I don't know how to describe the attacks precisely, but I'm quite sure they're thought related.

I still don't know what to do, but I'm considering seeing a doctor.

Thanks, and have a good day.

[Principium Nexus]

Scary ≠ bad, rather a significant but shaking experience. You can only grow and become stronger by really knowing how to walk in the dark.

[Faceless]

On 5/22/2018 at 2:01 AM, Moment said:

is this what I have to go through in order to have and Enlightenment experience? 

Why do you want an enlightenment experience? 

 

And if if you have one do you understand yourself so completely that you totally leave that experience behind? 

 

If that experience is carried over to the light memory it then becomes projected on top of the next new moment experiencing. Then you are back to where you started. 

Are you aware of the nature of experience? 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Faceless

[blazed]

Yeah the no self feeling is normal in deep meditation, you need to go deeper, prepare to die, this is it end of the line for ego, if you give in to thoughts at that moment or break the meditation the ego won the battle.

It's very difficult to do as its not a choice of "i will do this or that" it kind of just needs to happen.

You can literally meditate to the point that all your your body dissolves and you can no longer sense it, if you do it with complete darkness and silence this sensation is even better.

I lost all sense of self and became pure consciousness, an indescribable energy field or whatever you want to call it, the nothingness, infinite, god, samahdi, I don't know if it goes deeper tho.

Edited May 24, 2018 by blazed

[cetus]

53 minutes ago, blazed said:

I lost all sense of self and became pure consciousness, an indescribable energy field or whatever you want to call it, the nothingness, infinite, god, samahdi, I don't know if it goes deeper tho.

@blazed  Ever surrender while having that blissful experience?  I did to see how deep it could get and I completely vanished. Not even the witnessing of pure consciousness remained. I don't know what that is even called. Cessation maybe?

[Faceless]

Yeah. There shouldn’t be any fear at all. If there is fear then the experiencer still remains.

i think this has to do with memory. 

[cetus]

@blazed I just read this and it sounds a lot like what you experience.

By Andrew Z. Cohen

180

One of the many miraculous functions of meditation is that it is a portal to a different dimension.

When you go deeply into the meditative state, your awareness detaches itself from the thought-stream. Then your identification with emotion, memory, time and body begins to fall away. You become aware of something very mysterious. Imagine that you had been fast asleep in a small dark chamber and then you suddenly awakened to find yourself floating in the infinite depth of a vast, peaceful ocean. You literally become aware of a new dimension, when moments before you had experienced yourself as being trapped, a prisoner of your body, mind and emotions. When you awaken to this new dimension, all sense of confinement disappears. You feel that you have access to the whole universe and also to that which the universe exists within. You’re aware of body, mind, time, and space, but there’s another dimension that extends in all directions, unlimited by any of it. Meditation is the portal to this dimension, a door to the realization of limitlessness.

Why is this experience significant? Because the infinite context you awaken to is not just a quiet place inside your own head. It’s a deeper dimension of reality itself. Life, death and everything in between, reality as a whole — the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, all that ever was and ever could be — is made up of both the manifest and the unmanifest. But most of the time, all we are aware of is the manifest dimension, the domain of time and space and becoming. Meditation will give you the direct, conscious experience of the unmanifest dimension, which is the ground of being itself.

The “ground of being” is empty. It is an objectless, timeless, spaceless, thoughtless void. But everything that exists has come from this no-place, including you and me. Paradoxically, while empty, this no-place is pregnant with infinite, unborn potential. It is the ground we all emerge from, the womb of the entire universe. When something came from nothing, 14 billion years ago, the nothing didn’t disappear. That unmanifest, unborn dimension is the ever-present ground out of which everything is arising in every moment. And meditation allows you to know this ground within your own experience. Even in the awareness of the body and the movement of thought, beneath it all, in the state of meditation, you become conscious of a current of stillness that is the echo and the reflection of the ground of being. There is a great mystery there. In the infinite depth of that emptiness, there arises a knowing, a pure knowing itself that seems to answer all our questions and relieve us of all our existential doubts.

Whenever we journey far enough beyond the conditioned mind — beyond thought, beyond form, beyond time — we will always discover this same mystery. That is why we meditate, so we can awaken to the instantaneously liberating nature of the ground of being. The more profound is our experience of the ground of being, the more we begin to emanate that mysterious knowing which is enlightened consciousness itself.

 

[blazed]

@cetus56

Yeah sounds familiar but words are too limited at describing it.

I've had many meditation sessions were there was a no sense of time, for example a 1 hour meditations that felt like 2 minutes i don't know if thats what you mean when you say "no self".

This was different, this was a no-self full of energy.

It was very powerful and blissful, when I came out of it I'd say this picture pretty much sums up what I felt:

I can't really use words for it was just feelings and sensations in a place of no self and emptiness.

It sucks cuz i can't enter this place whenever I want lucky to have glimpsed it so far.

Also another particular feeling I had before entering this sensation was something snapped in my mind and I had clear direct focus with no mind chatter, a silent but laser like focus which I never felt before in my life.

I think one of the reasons I can't reexperience it is because now it's coming from a place of ego, the ego wants it, that day the meditation session was really good and lasted 2 hours I hardly ever do over an hour, there was a sense of being no one, not a thing.

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by blazed

[Arkandeus]

enlightenment is physical and when concepts finally make place for physical truth it can be scary

just take it easy, keep your meditation up and when you feel you are ready to go that place again do so, do not rush over there

 

its like a psychedic trip, before tripping again you have to let the insights come in, settle down, and be grounded again

 

looking back psychedelics are a good testing ground to prepare us for enlightenment

[Viking]

this work is impossible without surrender.

I also experienced somewhat they way you described, like no one is behind the eyes, but it was less intense and I didnt panic. i was like "oh, i dont exist, thats cool".

if you have'nt read the book "the power of now", you better, it teaches you how to surrender.

if you HAVE read the book, but a long time ago, reread it, im doing it right now and the wisdom is entirely different.

surrender bruv

Edited May 24, 2018 by Viking