Symptoms Of Heightening Awareness You Can Look Out For

[Azrael]

So in the last few months I kind of purged through a transformation - I still am - which is completely new territory for me. I don't know if one can read and guess it through my posts on this forum but at some point you probably will.

What happened is that after I watched Leo's "Free Will"-video I meditated on the question "What is my next thought?" and for the first time in my life I had the sensation of having a thought w/o having the sensation of originating it from myself. It's kind of like if you talk to yourself and then the sensation of "you talking" stops but the talking itself doesn't stop.

I had this throughout the meditation a couple of times and I think I probably cried out of joy / fear / confusion - I don't recall. I proved the first time in my life - after meditating for like 8-10 months or so - that this enlightenment stuff is actually the real deal. Before all that, although I had some mystical experiences and what not a few times you could still write them off as something that's weird, not reproducible, mystical. 

But that meditation opened a whole other chapter and should introduce me to a few new things. And I cover them in detail in a sec. Basically from then on I had my typical meditation cycles of feeling good and bad but it deepened from week to week and a complete new dimension you could say came into picture - my awareness heightened (and still does).

The following things happened and still happen to me and I connect them with the heightening of my awareness (basically through observation):

1.) You think you are mentally ill. One of the first reactions after and still in the meditation I mentioned is that I thought I'm schizophrenic, that I'm done. This really fucked me up for some time. You may have the intuition that this is your spiritual progress but at first it seems like you are getting worse then you ever were. Why is that? Basically, you are now - as a normal person - resting in your illusion that has been successfully built over the years. You have your problems - what is probably the reason you wanna get out of yourself - but it's mostly okay. When you start to break that shit down you will reach the moment where you are totally lost, you are trying to find yourself, thoughts come up, feelings come up and you just think you are ill. Maybe you have even moments in which you sincerely think you are dying - I had those. You will have to come to the point where this is okay for you. it's hard at first, trust me.

2.) You begin to see patterns in everything (you think you hallucinate). If you've ever done acid which SWIM has apparently done you know how it feels when you get out of your head and into your senses. It's not like you are seeing your dead grandma, it's more like you have now in your normal state a very clear hallucination of the separation of things that was implanted in you from the early days on. This vanishes when you are on acid and also when your awareness heightens. Of course not in such a dramatic way like when you are heigh on psychedelics, but you will have some very interesting moments. Like for example you take a walk and you feel a sudden recognition how the trees next to you represent the flow of nature, how the grass and the flowers are highly ordered in their flow and how even the most unnatural human-made thing is completely bound to nature. You can see that a lot in fancy hotels. They try to make it look like everything is always clean and fresh, but if you look closely you see how everything is falling apart - because this is just the other side of it. I could bring up a whole lot of other examples, basically you will rest in your senses way more and feel a intuitive recognition how everything is descending from this natural flow. (When I first had this I got really fascinated with Taoism and I still am highly addicted to that stuff. It's a real good sum-up of what is happening if you ask me. Probably the closest you can get with words.)

3.) You begin to be okay with not being okay. At some point it becomes very apparent to you that you actually have no control at all. This comes and goes but over the time you can prove that for yourself. I did and still do that sometimes. I focus a lot on the arising and vanishing of my thoughts and actions and are now able to at least see that I do not create them. It's scary shit as I said. But also - when you are through feeling scary about it - you will begin to rest in it because there is nothing else to do. As you do that you will reconnect with your intuition and through that be able to push the boundaries in certain situations and be totally fucked up and okay with that in others. Basically you become aware of the dance of love and terror in your day to day life and see that it is a game and that you were and are completely fascinated with trying to let one side win - well this doesn't work. If you become aware of that, you will find rest. And guess what, then you kind of sudo-won. Because even though you might be shitty at some times, you don't feel connected to it any more.

4.) You completely let go of what you think and do. This again, is very scary at first. But you'll reach a stage in which you have the sensation of not being the source of your thoughts and actions in such clarity that it seems like you are the container in which they arise and you are acting them out. At this stage, there is still some separation left (the feeling of being pushed around) but it's totally surreal.

5.) You begin to not care about your ego so much any more. At some point I just found myself making fun of myself in front of a buddy of mine and I felt complete peace. I laughed myself silly. In that moment it completely strut me that I would never do that. I would feel completely shitty and would try to manipulate the situation in such an advanced way that I don't make a foul out of myself. This intuitively stopped (to some degree). This is completely freeing if you experience that. Also, pain seems not to harm you so much any more. Not in the sense of you can cut an arm off and be well but you hurl yourself somewhere, feel the pain very consciously but not be affected by it very much. It's very strange to experience that at first.

Well, I could go on and on with similar points but I think you get the drill here. Also, I want to mention that all of these experiences came and come in phases in which they presented themselves very clearly and then lowered again. But it seems like your base-level of mindfulness slowly gets adjusted by this and you tap into a whole new world.

So, if you see any of those think back to this post, lay back and smile. You are on the right track.

Cheers to you,

[Evilwave Heddy]

I gave up meditating and the whole self awareness stuff a while back (a month or so) to purely concentrate on my exams...and I kinda just strayed from it.  Yeah, a bad idea because it's hard to get back into it and I also feel a bit....dirty or something.  But reading this has made me want to hit the mat again now that my exams are finished. 

Thanks man.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Evilwave Heddy

[Franz]

Thank you for sharing this. I noticed some of these things myself already!

[Flicker_boy]

On 16/06/2016 at 1:22 PM, Arik said:

They try to make it look like everything is always clean and fresh, but if you look closely you see how everything is falling apart - because this is just the other side of it.

not sure who you talking about anymore

Edited June 24, 2016 by Lorenzo Engel

[Emerald]

On 6/16/2016 at 0:22 PM, Arik said:

So in the last few months I kind of purged through a transformation - I still am - which is completely new territory for me. I don't know if one can read and guess it through my posts on this forum but at some point you probably will.

What happened is that after I watched Leo's "Free Will"-video I meditated on the question "What is my next thought?" and for the first time in my life I had the sensation of having a thought w/o having the sensation of originating it from myself. It's kind of like if you talk to yourself and then the sensation of "you talking" stops but the talking itself doesn't stop.

I had this throughout the meditation a couple of times and I think I probably cried out of joy / fear / confusion - I don't recall. I proved the first time in my life - after meditating for like 8-10 months or so - that this enlightenment stuff is actually the real deal. Before all that, although I had some mystical experiences and what not a few times you could still write them off as something that's weird, not reproducible, mystical. 

But that meditation opened a whole other chapter and should introduce me to a few new things. And I cover them in detail in a sec. Basically from then on I had my typical meditation cycles of feeling good and bad but it deepened from week to week and a complete new dimension you could say came into picture - my awareness heightened (and still does).

The following things happened and still happen to me and I connect them with the heightening of my awareness (basically through observation):

1.) You think you are mentally ill. One of the first reactions after and still in the meditation I mentioned is that I thought I'm schizophrenic, that I'm done. This really fucked me up for some time. You may have the intuition that this is your spiritual progress but at first it seems like you are getting worse then you ever were. Why is that? Basically, you are now - as a normal person - resting in your illusion that has been successfully built over the years. You have your problems - what is probably the reason you wanna get out of yourself - but it's mostly okay. When you start to break that shit down you will reach the moment where you are totally lost, you are trying to find yourself, thoughts come up, feelings come up and you just think you are ill. Maybe you have even moments in which you sincerely think you are dying - I had those. You will have to come to the point where this is okay for you. it's hard at first, trust me.

2.) You begin to see patterns in everything (you think you hallucinate). If you've ever done acid which SWIM has apparently done you know how it feels when you get out of your head and into your senses. It's not like you are seeing your dead grandma, it's more like you have now in your normal state a very clear hallucination of the separation of things that was implanted in you from the early days on. This vanishes when you are on acid and also when your awareness heightens. Of course not in such a dramatic way like when you are heigh on psychedelics, but you will have some very interesting moments. Like for example you take a walk and you feel a sudden recognition how the trees next to you represent the flow of nature, how the grass and the flowers are highly ordered in their flow and how even the most unnatural human-made thing is completely bound to nature. You can see that a lot in fancy hotels. They try to make it look like everything is always clean and fresh, but if you look closely you see how everything is falling apart - because this is just the other side of it. I could bring up a whole lot of other examples, basically you will rest in your senses way more and feel a intuitive recognition how everything is descending from this natural flow. (When I first had this I got really fascinated with Taoism and I still am highly addicted to that stuff. It's a real good sum-up of what is happening if you ask me. Probably the closest you can get with words.)

3.) You begin to be okay with not being okay. At some point it becomes very apparent to you that you actually have no control at all. This comes and goes but over the time you can prove that for yourself. I did and still do that sometimes. I focus a lot on the arising and vanishing of my thoughts and actions and are now able to at least see that I do not create them. It's scary shit as I said. But also - when you are through feeling scary about it - you will begin to rest in it because there is nothing else to do. As you do that you will reconnect with your intuition and through that be able to push the boundaries in certain situations and be totally fucked up and okay with that in others. Basically you become aware of the dance of love and terror in your day to day life and see that it is a game and that you were and are completely fascinated with trying to let one side win - well this doesn't work. If you become aware of that, you will find rest. And guess what, then you kind of sudo-won. Because even though you might be shitty at some times, you don't feel connected to it any more.

4.) You completely let go of what you think and do. This again, is very scary at first. But you'll reach a stage in which you have the sensation of not being the source of your thoughts and actions in such clarity that it seems like you are the container in which they arise and you are acting them out. At this stage, there is still some separation left (the feeling of being pushed around) but it's totally surreal.

5.) You begin to not care about your ego so much any more. At some point I just found myself making fun of myself in front of a buddy of mine and I felt complete peace. I laughed myself silly. In that moment it completely strut me that I would never do that. I would feel completely shitty and would try to manipulate the situation in such an advanced way that I don't make a foul out of myself. This intuitively stopped (to some degree). This is completely freeing if you experience that. Also, pain seems not to harm you so much any more. Not in the sense of you can cut an arm off and be well but you hurl yourself somewhere, feel the pain very consciously but not be affected by it very much. It's very strange to experience that at first.

Well, I could go on and on with similar points but I think you get the drill here. Also, I want to mention that all of these experiences came and come in phases in which they presented themselves very clearly and then lowered again. But it seems like your base-level of mindfulness slowly gets adjusted by this and you tap into a whole new world.

So, if you see any of those think back to this post, lay back and smile. You are on the right track.

Cheers to you,

That's wonderful. You may have mentioned to me before, but how long have you been meditating for and how long during the day? Also, how long can you sit for and have you done any retreats?

[abrakamowse]

@Arik  Thanks!!! Before doing meditation I was in a mental institution for a week. I know what you are talking about!

 

Thanks for sharing!

[abrakamowse]

And lately I was trying to play with the feelings of pain, like really feeling them.

And, to my surprise, they are not so painful. A lot of pain is created by the mind. Interesting.

[Naviy]

On 16.06.2016 at 7:22 PM, Arik said:

3.) You begin to be okay with not being okay.

This is what I notice the most in my experience (I've been meditating for 4 years not consistently, and for 1,5 year consistently). Actually, right now I'm pretty sad and lonely because I wanted to talk with my best friend via Skype, and she did not come and I am worrying about her a bit. But I have kind of a global view now. I can see that there is no sense in fighting "bad" emotions and thoughts, because they appeared in your mind as a consequence of the natural activity of mind. They are the result of mechanical biological process, and you did not participate in this process. And it is not only an intellectual conclusion. I have learnd about the meaningless of resistance during my meditations. You can accept the experience, because it already IS (it already exists as the only reality), and be at peace, or you can try not to accept what IS, and create tension.

I also have this kind of attitude... Well, how do I know that "bad" emotions are not needed? How can I be sure that "they should not exist right now" (this thought is the essence of resistance)? I trust to what appears in reality more. If it is here, it should be here. It should be here by the fact it IS already here. And if it should be here, why resist it?

Actually, accepting or not accepting reality is not "your" choice too, but that's a different story...

Edited June 24, 2016 by Naviy

[Azrael]

20 hours ago, Lorenzo Engel said:

not sure who you talking about anymore

I'm talking about how fancy hotels try to give you the illusion that everything is clean and fresh always. They put tremendous effort into keeping this illusion up so that they can be fancy. I used this as an analogy.

[Azrael]

20 hours ago, Emerald Wilkins said:

That's wonderful. You may have mentioned to me before, but how long have you been meditating for and how long during the day? Also, how long can you sit for and have you done any retreats?

Here are the stats, Miss : I meditate for about 14 months now, I currently sit for a hour since 12 months I guess (before that I sat for 20 minutes), I can sit 120 minutes in a strong determination sit (but still with pains - I'm not through yet) and I only have done a few private retreats, like sitting 3-4 hours a day when I have the time to do so. But I'd like to do formal retreats in the not so distant future. If you go to the east an meditate, send me a message in beforehand and I get on a plane if I have time.

[Toby]

@Arik Weren't you the one that wanted to go to Antaji? Did you explore the Zen-Group in Berlin? I just read these days that they both have similar roots (Kodo Sawaki). Where I live there is a Zen-center associated with it and they do Sesshins quite regulary (in Schönböken). And no, I'm not endorsing them, I only was to this group one time, even if I did like it there.

Edited June 25, 2016 by Toby

[Emerald]

17 minutes ago, Arik said:

Here are the stats, Miss : I meditate for about 14 months now, I currently sit for a hour since 12 months I guess (before that I sat for 20 minutes), I can sit 120 minutes in a strong determination sit (but still with pains - I'm not through yet) and I only have done a few private retreats, like sitting 3-4 hours a day when I have the time to do so. But I'd like to do formal retreats in the not so distant future. If you go to the east an meditate, send me a message in beforehand and I get on a plane if I have time.

Thank you for sharing! I wish there were more extended half-day retreats. Most that I've found are complete full-day silent retreats where there is only that for 10+ days. I would love to do one like this, but with kids it's not possible for me. If they had the same thing only with half-days, this would be perfect.

[abrakamowse]

@Emerald Wilkins @Arik

Maybe we can create a kind of "Amusement Park for Kids with Meditation Retreats"... good business idea hehehehe