Crazy Meditation Experience

[Greg O]

I had a crazy experience tonight while I was meditating that I had to write about while it was fresh in my mind.  I was hoping someone could help me understand it, because I don’t really know how to explain this experience to myself but it was unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life. 

Long story short, I’ve been following Leo and Acutalized.org for about 6 months now and still relatively inexperienced with enlightenment. I decided to dedicate my Saturday to enlightenment work and spent the day doing some off and on meditation sessions and self-inquiry.  After watch Leo’s “Meditation of Steroids” video, I elected to finish the day with a strong determination sit.

I set my iPhone timer for 75 minutes.  My hips are pretty inflexible, but I’ve been trying to make myself sit cross-legged during my meditations. I decided it would be good for me to force myself to sit through whatever discomfort arose and holy shit was it uncomfortable. It truly is amazing how difficult it is to sit completely 100% motionless the entire time.  After what felt like about 45 minutes, the pain in my legs became so intense that I pretended I was a marathon monk and had to kill myself if I quit. That’s when my crazy experience happened.

At first, it started as a tingling feeling in my legs and felt like my brain was releasing some kind of feel good chemical to help me get through the pain.  The tingling then came over my whole body and it felt amazing.  It was an interesting feeling, so I sort of just felt into it and allowed it to overtake my body.  Then all of a sudden after a few more seconds, I completely broke through the pain and my vision went totally blurred.  I could feel my eyes open wide (like the face you think of when someone sees a ghost) but couldn’t see anything but totally blurred light. Then I experienced this incredibly immense euphoria where I became insanely conscious of everything in my experience. My heart beat, my breath, the feeling of my entire body, the sounds from outside and the fan spinning above me.  Like my ordinary awareness x1000.  It was like entering a totally different realm of reality where I was accessing some consciousness that I didn’t know was possible.  Not sure if everyone will get this reference, but I almost felt like Bran from Game of Thrones when his eyes go back into his head.  Literally, the best, most intense feeling I’ve ever had in my life. After what I believe to be about 30 seconds, the experience became so amazing that it started to scare the shit out of me, and my vision refocused and I came out of it.  The rest of my session I was extremely present but nothing like what I felt earlier.

After my timer went off, I just sat there for a few minutes like what in the fuck just happened to me? I’m not really sure what happened, but it felt powerful. Has anyone ever experienced anything similar to this? I can imagine people having breakthroughs during meditation, but it was just so crazy with my vision blurring out and everything. Maybe this experience isn’t as significant as it feels to me right now, but I felt like it should at least be documented.

-Kyle

[Richard Alpert]

sounds somewhat familiar. the thing with these experiences is that the ego will hold on to it dear life not to experience surrendering / unknown. these expereinces are scary as fuck for the ego.

[cetus]

@Kyle M I can relate to that one. It feels as if your awareness is suddenly tuned to a higher frequency. I'm not sure exactly what that is. Maybe the brain is functioning in a different wave pattern? It happened to me a couple times. It's almost like a trance state or something. Way different than anything I ever experienced before. The first time it happened  I remember saying to myself "Holy shit I never knew consciousness/awareness could shift like this!". It felt as if consciousness changed channels to a totally different station, just like changing stations on a radio. My eyes were wide open too at the time but what I was seeing was not the room in front of me anymore. I was seeing into a totally different space within consciousness. *I was stone sober at the time so there were no "outside" influences.  just as a note. Any of this sound familiar?

[Greg O]

Yes, both definitely relatable to what I experienced.  These strong determination sits are so mentally challenging, but now that I've gotten this taste of higher consciousness, I'm excited for where it could possibly take me.  It's such an interesting form of satisfaction when you're able to finally break through the physical pain and mental struggle.  

[cetus]

2 minutes ago, Kyle M said:

 It's such an interesting form of satisfaction when you're able to finally break through the physical pain and mental struggle.  

@Kyle M  Next you can conquer the ego self. Breaking down that "scare the shit out of me" as you call it stuff. That's where it's taking you next. Research "ego death". Study it and familiarize yourself with it. Move past all fear the same as you did with the pain. Your breaking through all the mind to find what lies beyond it. There is more to go. Put total trust into that "higher consciousness" and it will see you through. It will bring you home by totally surrendering to it.  This is the key. That "scare the shit out of me" is the doorway believe it or not. Yea, I know. Holy shit!

[Greg O]

Great advice. I appreciate the help!

[cetus]

@Kyle M According to Leary, Metzer & Alpert (1964), ego death, or ego loss as they call it, is part of the (symbolic) experience of death in which the old ego must die before one can be spiritually reborn.[13] Ego loss is

... complete transcendence − beyond words, beyond space−time, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom from all game (and biological) involvement.