Looking Into Each Others Eyes Meditation Hallucination

[Kazman]

Hi!

I want to ask about some of my experiences during eye meditations with my girlfriend. We don't do them super frequently since we have a baby and usually when we both have time alone it's not the first thing you think about. But whenever we do it it's really powerful, brings us closer together and all kinds of things happen.

The reason we started with it was because I read an article saying something like looking into someone else's eyes for more than a couple of minutes can give hallucinations, which sounded exciting. It goes like this: basically we sit and look in each others eyes, and not much more to it, both relax and calm themselves and focus. We usually have a song in the background and when it's over after about 10 minutes we hug.

At several occasions doing this I've gotten really scared. I don't get any powerful hallucinations but her face does change and different features become more or less prominent. Sometimes I become terrified. It feels like I'm looking at a new person that I've never seen before, and I don't know this persons intentions. Is she good or evil? From this world or the beyond? It almost seems like she is just an empty shell, and I don't know what I'm looking into.

The last time this happened it was very strong but I managed to remain calm and remind myself that everything is just content in my experience and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But it's just so freaky. Something about looking into eyes for a long time. I've experienced this with my own face as well, after a meditation session I've looked in the bathroom mirror, still in a pretty open mind state, and tried to detach from what I see, and when I feel that the face I'm looking at is empty, a stranger that I really don't know, I want to scream and I feel crazy. This has happened a couple of times.

The feeling is similar to very scary experiences of sleep paralysis that I've had during stressful periods in my life. I know that meditation and enlightenment work can be unnerving sometimes because the ego feels threatened. But this is almost too much. Should I watch out with this, is it normal or am I slightly crazy? It would help me a lot to hear similar experiences you've encountered or some words of wisdom from somebody further along the path.

TLDR; I get (almost) panic attacks during meditative states when looking into eyes for long periods of time. What's going on?

[oysterman]

I once sat and watched my face in the mirror for a whole hour.

The effects included vastly distorted facial features (like massive eyes or warped cheekbones). At points I looked like decades older, or the other gender. At points my face looked idealised, like a painting. I really resonate with 'feeling like you're looking at a stranger' that you described.

Personally I did not find this induced panicky feelings, it was quite amusing. But meditation can. In 'The Dark Side of Meditation', Leo's main message is to keep going, keep meditating, through any 'bad stuff', unless you have real reason to believe that you should temporarily stop your meditation habit.

Hopefully you don't feel too threatened to stop, keep it up

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Kazman said:

Hi!

I want to ask about some of my experiences during eye meditations with my girlfriend. We don't do them super frequently since we have a baby and usually when we both have time alone it's not the first thing you think about. But whenever we do it it's really powerful, brings us closer together and all kinds of things happen.

The reason we started with it was because I read an article saying something like looking into someone else's eyes for more than a couple of minutes can give hallucinations, which sounded exciting. It goes like this: basically we sit and look in each others eyes, and not much more to it, both relax and calm themselves and focus. We usually have a song in the background and when it's over after about 10 minutes we hug.

At several occasions doing this I've gotten really scared. I don't get any powerful hallucinations but her face does change and different features become more or less prominent. Sometimes I become terrified. It feels like I'm looking at a new person that I've never seen before, and I don't know this persons intentions. Is she good or evil? From this world or the beyond? It almost seems like she is just an empty shell, and I don't know what I'm looking into.

The last time this happened it was very strong but I managed to remain calm and remind myself that everything is just content in my experience and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But it's just so freaky. Something about looking into eyes for a long time. I've experienced this with my own face as well, after a meditation session I've looked in the bathroom mirror, still in a pretty open mind state, and tried to detach from what I see, and when I feel that the face I'm looking at is empty, a stranger that I really don't know, I want to scream and I feel crazy. This has happened a couple of times.

The feeling is similar to very scary experiences of sleep paralysis that I've had during stressful periods in my life. I know that meditation and enlightenment work can be unnerving sometimes because the ego feels threatened. But this is almost too much. Should I watch out with this, is it normal or am I slightly crazy? It would help me a lot to hear similar experiences you've encountered or some words of wisdom from somebody further along the path.

TLDR; I get (almost) panic attacks during meditative states when looking into eyes for long periods of time. What's going on?

I've experienced all the things that you talked about here: the panic attacks, the depersonalization when I look in the mirror (or more recently at my face and voice and mannerisms videos), and the fear looking into my eyes or others for too long. I think it's all just part of becoming more conscious and realizing that the world is not as we commonly think it is. There are a lot of unnerving things about becoming more conscious. It's just part of it. Another one that used to really bug me was that I felt like the present moment and my awareness of it could just pop like a bubble because it was so insubstantial. I was very ungrounded back then.

[Frogfucius]

Yeah, I've done the staring into a mirror thing a few times. It's a mind blowing hallucination, really. It's like the ego is forcing itself to look at its own creation, the "I" that associates with the body. Since "I" am not really the body, the ego reacts to the challenge and starts panicking at the hallucination.

Merely just a meaningless idea, but an interesting effect nonetheless.

[Bizarre]

If you want my advice my friend, you're barking up the wrong tree.

You should be concerned with (if you want to know the truth) why you think "you" are a person stuck inside a body stuck inside a world.

Because that's the complete opposite of reality. 

Spend time thinking about that instead of looking into someone's eyes, because you can have all the cosmic experiences you like, in the end all you will be left with is the same, mundane, ordinary, everyday reality you find yourself in right now. 

What IS the true nature of that reality that you're so desperately attempting to escape? What's your persons role in this reality? What is the person? What is the girlfriend? Who or what are they in relation to you? Who are you? Why do the scripitures say that the objects are you but you are not the objects?

 

Edited November 17, 2016 by Bizarre

[Prabhaker]

3 hours ago, Kazman said:

It almost seems like she is just an empty shell, and I don't know what I'm looking into.

Eye gazing meditation is a simple yet profound practice. Something sacred and intimate awakens when you look in this way.

You would have likely heard the phrase, the eyes are the window to the soul. They are just that.

Sit and look into each other’s eyes, [it is better to blink as little as possible, a soft gaze]. Look deeper and deeper, without thinking....

If you don’t think, if you just stare into the eyes, soon the waves will disappear and the ocean will be revealed…. If you can look deep down into the eyes, you will feel that the man has disappeared, the person has disappeared. Some oceanic phenomenon is hidden behind, and this person was just a waving of a depth, a wave of something unknown, hidden.

 

[Feeble Dave]

I have also experienced this with my own face in the mirror. I heard from somewhere that it could be that the brain starts to filter out stationary objects from vision if the whole scene is still (don't move your eyes). This might cause the blurring and warping facial features .

[Kazman]

@Frogfucius @Bizarre @Emerald Wilkins @oysterman Hi all! Just wanted to say I had an insight last time I did the eye meditation.

I've been reading mushroom wisdom by Martin Ball and in it he talks about how to approach mushrooms for spiritual practice. A lot of it has to do with letting the mushrooms show you how you construct your own reality, and something just clicked.

I had even more powerful hallucinations then usual during the eye meditation but I realized it was my mind struggling to interpret my sensory input in different ways as best as it could, and I was able to relax while my mind was struggling and trying to put things in a box. Almost like it was trying to scare me into letting it do what it always does.

Biggest spiritual aha-moment I've had in a while, so I wanted to share it ?

 

 

[Emerald]

8 minutes ago, Kazman said:

@Frogfucius @Bizarre @Emerald Wilkins @oysterman Hi all! Just wanted to say I had an insight last time I did the eye meditation.

I've been reading mushroom wisdom by Martin Ball and in it he talks about how to approach mushrooms for spiritual practice. A lot of it has to do with letting the mushrooms show you how you construct your own reality, and something just clicked.

I had even more powerful hallucinations then usual during the eye meditation but I realized it was my mind struggling to interpret my sensory input in different ways as best as it could, and I was able to relax while my mind was struggling and trying to put things in a box. Almost like it was trying to scare me into letting it do what it always does.

Biggest spiritual aha-moment I've had in a while, so I wanted to share it ?

Great observation. I'm curious, were the hallucinations interwoven with reality seamlessly or was it a part thought/part visual phenomenon kind of experience?

[Kazman]

@Emerald Wilkins Hallucinations interwoven with reality... sometimes eyebrows disappeared, sometimes the mouth disappeared, there weren't much colours, and sometimes there was no point of focus and all details were treated equally and then sometimes all would be almost black except for the face in the middle. The face would look old, beautiful, alien, monstrous and just sort of morph around. But it was all tied to what my eyes were perceiving, it wasn't like a DMT-trip