See how many times they write the word 'I'? They've never meditated properly even once. Teacher my ass, these people do way more damage than help anyone.
Do you meditate? Because if it leads to an attitude like you're displaying, it's not a great advertisment.
My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
21–30 of 419 posts
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#22Had anybody else noticed that for many Stoicism has replaced Buddhism as the “cool” and “intellectual” spirituality amongst those in the liberal tech world?
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#23My most intense mindfulness experience was on a two-week silent retreat, in the woods, isolated from all of humanity. At the beginning, I met only the creatures of the forest and heard only the whispers of the trees. By the sixth day I was hallucinating gold and purple snakes slithering out of my belly onto the ground around me. By the eighth day I had visions of a cloud island vista with animals the world had never…
You're describing a psychosis.
I am describing my experience. If you make the choice to medicalize my words, that is your own interpretation. But you were not there, you do not know.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#24Sounds like jhana worked and they awoke, via a Kundalini awakening. It's a shame the teachers couldn't provide more support.
I would just say the feedback loops between awareness got magnified by a lot. I would suggest the author to read the book "Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man". In that book, Gopi Krishna relates how his attention got fractured experienced sensations far intense. > Often in the silence and darkness of my room at night I found myself looking with dread at horribly disfigured faces and distorted forms bending and…
Yes, the author should totally study Kundalini. Krishna's story is scary.
It's even mentioned in Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha and The Mind Illuminated. Some traditions make it a central component (tantric & yogic), while some ignore it (Zen), but it's there in all of them. The core of religions flowed out of these experiences IMO.
There should absolutely be greater awareness that this is where meditation can lead if practiced with sufficient intensity. It's hard to say what the frequency is, but the centrality of these experiences and extrasensory stories (e.g. the Buddha seeing spirits), suggests it's a widely experienced phenomenon along the path. I mean, if the aim of meditation is to awaken to the greater consciousness, then one day you're going to have to experience it to progress.
This is where the West has lost its way. The culture has swung so far in favour of materialism it rejects the idea of universal consciousness, so sells mindfulness as simply brain exercises. That means if someone experiences the bigger reality they have no frame of reference and little support like they would if they followed a tradition where these experiences are more widely experienced.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#25My most intense mindfulness experience was on a two-week silent retreat, in the woods, isolated from all of humanity. At the beginning, I met only the creatures of the forest and heard only the whispers of the trees. By the sixth day I was hallucinating gold and purple snakes slithering out of my belly onto the ground around me. By the eighth day I had visions of a cloud island vista with animals the world had never…
You seem to have suffered a psychosis, actually
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#26as Jung says: the western individual is ready do travel great lengths, go farthest to the east, in the deserts, in the ice, meditate, change what they eat, what they drink, they will do anything, but look inside themselves.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#27What he experienced is actually expected, deeper states of meditation bring out even harder experiences. Meditation is marketed in the west as some sort of a relaxation pill, designed to cure anxiety and other mental ailments. It's actually not. Meditation is a hardcore exercise for the mind and if your mind is not strong enough then deeper states will break you.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#28My most intense mindfulness experience was on a two-week silent retreat, in the woods, isolated from all of humanity. At the beginning, I met only the creatures of the forest and heard only the whispers of the trees. By the sixth day I was hallucinating gold and purple snakes slithering out of my belly onto the ground around me. By the eighth day I had visions of a cloud island vista with animals the world had never…
Sounds like your upper chakras opened. Well done on making great progress. Sounds like an amazing experience.
It's no surprise these experiences are often misinterpreted as psychosis by people without an awareness of where deep meditative states can lead.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#29Sounds like jhana worked and they awoke, via a Kundalini awakening. It's a shame the teachers couldn't provide more support.
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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#30as Jung says: the western individual is ready do travel great lengths, go farthest to the east, in the deserts, in the ice, meditate, change what they eat, what they drink, they will do anything, but look inside themselves.
Sublimation and carefully crafted neurosis to turn us all into powertools our society wields?