"negative" Physical Reactions To Contemplation

[stevegan928]

a lot of the time when i contemplate i get anxiety (like a slight adrenaline rush) or sometimes i twitch. is this like a reaction of my ego manifesting in the body? i like to think of it as a sign i'm doing better because my ego feels like i'm killing it but maybe my ego is the one patting me on the back?  

i think part of it is because we often hear we'll never know when we'll realize enlightenment. the deeper i go into contemplation i sometimes feel like i'm right on the edge of realization but then i remember it's suppose to be spontaneous and my consciousness often "drops" again and/or i get anxious. 

anyone have an idea of whats going on here? 

[Prabhaker]

26 minutes ago, stevegan928 said:

a lot of the time when i contemplate i get anxiety

Contemplation is not meditation. Contemplation means thinking. Thinking can be of two types. One is zigzag, in jumps from one object to another, a little crazy; that is ordinary thinking. Anything leads to anything. A dog starts barking and you start thinking about your girlfriend. There seems to be no relationship, but maybe your girl had said once, "I go on barking at you and you don't listen!"

Suddenly the dog reminds you. Or maybe she also has a dog who barks at you whenever you go to see her. And then from one thing to another... you will not stay with anything long. The girlfriend reminds you of her mother, and so on, so forth. Nobody knows where you are going to end. When you will look retrospectively you will be surprised: just the dog barking in the neighborhood started the whole process of thought.

Contemplation means remaining concerned with one object, thinking about it and only about it. Thinking has a consistency. If you are thinking about love, then you are thinking about love and all its aspects. You don't jump from one thing to another. Yes, you have a little rope just so that you can move around the subject of love, but you keep moving around it, around and around. You forget the whole world -- love becomes your world for the moment.

Meditation is not contemplation either because it is not thinking at all -- consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts -- trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

[stevegan928]

@Prabhaker i wasn't meditating or thinking. contemplating was just the word i chose to use. i was doing some what of a mixture of mindfulness and inquiry. 

[stevegan928]

@John Flores i was essentially just trying to eliminate the boarders and labels in my awareness, whilst trying to extend my idea of "self" outwards. this is the technique i use because it causes more of a shift in my awareness than any other technique i've tried thus far. i find myself searching but try to bring myself back to being. sometimes i'll say in my mind "it just is" and try to embody/capture the essence of  that notion. 

i was just telling you this in case you had some other idea of what i meant by "contemplation". 

[Prabhaker]

57 minutes ago, stevegan928 said:

a lot of the time when i contemplate i get anxiety (like a slight adrenaline rush) or sometimes i twitch.

You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and meditating, it becomes a problem. Every fiber of the body begins to move inside; every vein, every muscle, begins to move. You will begin to feel a subtle trembling; you will be aware of many points in the body of which you have never been aware before. And the more you try to just sit, the more movement you will feel inside you. So sitting can be used only if you have done other things first.

You can just walk, that is easier. You can just dance, that is even easier. And after you have been doing other things that are easier, then you can sit.

[bobbyward]

@stevegan928 for the last year i have had lots of facial tension when meditating or contemplating, I think it is the 'I' feeling being purged from the body. 90% of the separate 'I' is in the feelings in the body. 

and the more that is purged the more relaxation there is in the body, thats my experience anyway.