Do more experienced meditators see visuals or feel things while they meditate? I've read people seeing blue orbs and even astral projecting through meditation. I've also read that some people have spontaneous DMT releases while meditating, and other strange and interesting things. So my question is two fold. One: have any of you had these experiences to vouch for their validity? Two: if so how long does one meditate to achieve this and how long did you practice meditating before achieving this? I only meditate for about ten mins or so aday just wondering if, from longer sessions, i would see more benefit.
I can astral project when I wake up then fall back asleep. It only happens sometimes though. I often wake up with sleep paralysis and its pretty scary when that happens. If you do, don't wonder far from your home.
A year ago i was meditating 4-5 times a day for 15 minutes. I would essentially open my eyes and be calmer and aware. And the more i did it the better i could focus on my breathing. Which i think of like a wave. In then out
I just tried my first meditation, and it was very difficult for me not to think about anything. I'm going to give it a try everyday for at least 10 minutes and see how it goes from there.
Meditation can unlock all sorts of things. Visions. Astral projection. Various forms of ESP. Past life memories. Kundalini awakenings. And yes, DMT releases. Much of how these things happen are not very well understood, and the very few who do understand it are generally pretty secretive about it. I have experienced all of the above, and I stumbled upon it rather accidentally. I've always been a spiritually curious person and I got the idea to be a bit hardcore about it and try out what so many of the sages did in the holy scriptures of various ancient spiritual texts. (Please do not try this. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was being reckless in the extreme) What I did was: I went out into the desert (ie I isolated myself from all human contact. I didn't actually go to a desert) I stopped eating (fasting, I lived on perhaps 200-300 calories a day. mostly fruit, nuts, and seeds) I stopped sleeping (i got maybe 1 or 2 hrs of sleep per day, and that sleep wasn't exactly restful. It was just to stave off exhaustion) I started meditating (pretty much the entire time i was awake. at least 18 hrs a day) I did this for 3 weeks straight. And....it worked. I got my spiritual awakening. It was like I was on LSD for 5 days in a row, without a break. Except this was a thousand times more powerful than LSD. I experienced a euphoria that sex and drugs can't even begin to compare to. I saw things. Felt things. I was ONE. At long last, I had achieved ONEness. I began to experience psychic phenomena (clairvoyance, clairaudience, prescience and past life memories/connection to the collective unconscious) It was a bit freaky to hear the phone ring in my head, only to have it ring 5 seconds later in real life. This happened many times, and still does to this day. Or, I would think of someone and then I would get a call or text from them immediately after. I had a few occasions where I saw a bit farther into the future, mostly climate events like hurricanes. I can now say that seeing into the future is not as fun as you'd think. It's not fun seeing how your loved ones die. And then searching out other alternative futures to prevent your vision. I became lost in time doing this futile exercise. The human vessel is not meant to last forever. Time is like a web, not a straight line. And fixating on a singular future outcome can actually enslave you to that timeline. It entraps you. Alas, the euphoria and wonderment of the whole experience would not last. The spiritual experience came at a steep price. Eventually, the euphoria wore off, and I descended into the darker recesses of my subconscious. (This is actually a well documented pattern: breakthrough followed by breakdown. It's why so many "prophets" also experience madness) Just about every painful experience of my life was flushed out of my subconscious and was thrust into my conscious mind. It was like experiencing all the anger, pain, guilt, sorrow, and regret of your life all at once. Due to the strain of what I had been through in my first few days of awakening, it became hard to keep track of not just who I was, but also WHEN I was. Was I in the past? The future? What time was now? As euphoric as the first few days had been, I was now living in a state of terror. I was losing my mind. I even wrestled with an "evil entity" who fought for control of my mind. It felt like a "demon" but I now know that it was not a demon, because there are no demons. Rather, it was a manifestation of the dark side of my own subconscious. Carl Jung called it the "shadow" archetype. (btw, I learned a neat trick on how to defeat the "demon" or any "entity" trying to possess you) Not having eaten or slept in 3 weeks, my body was extremely weak and in a dangerous state. Things got so bad, that I ended up hospitalized. If the prior paragraph seems "wrong" to you, it's actually a natural process. Spiritual awakenings often initiate "healing crises." Kind of like a 3 day detox juice cleanse. You're only taking in the most nutritious stuff, but you start to feel sick, lethargic, maybe even bloated. It's because the removal of incoming toxins in combination with the nutrients you're taking in kicks your immune system response into overdrive, which causes all of the physiological symptoms that seem like disease. But it's actually a cleansing process, like vomiting is a cleansing process. So too, does your spirit/soul have the potential to go through such a process. The breakdown that I went through that followed my "breakthrough" was a sort of spiritual vomiting process of "spiritual vomiting," in order to purify itself. You cannot spiritually "evolve" without addressing your "issues." And the process was forcing me to face every single one of my "issues" all at once. I was overwhelmed. My emotions were totally out of whack. After I got out of the hospital, I was pretty lost for a while. The euphoria was gone as well as the terror. And I was left with a whole bunch of strange and sudden physiological issues that threatened my health and well being. I remember being extremely hot all the time, having the greatest difficulty sleeping, and I lost my appetite for days at a time. Aside from being afraid, I felt totally alone. I could not really relate these experiences to my family. Nor could I go to any of my friends about this. There were no answers for this in the Bible, the Kuran, or any other holy text. And I certainly couldn't go to the local priest or yoga instructor to have a friendly chat about what to do when psychic stuff starts happening to you. Thank god I found Gopi Krishna and his book, Kundalini: the Evolutionary Energy in Man. May he rest in peace. Here was someone (finally!) who actually went through all the stuff that I went through, curiously at almost the same age I went through it. Without that book, I don't know if I'd still be here today writing about it this stuff. I started to get answers to my questions. Things began to settle down, and I started the long, slow process of "balancing out." This all happened to me a few years ago. In the 30 yrs or so I'd been alive at the time, this was definitely the defining moment of my life, and still is. At the time, I foolishly thought I had reached enlightenment. But it wasn't enlightenment. It was an "awakening." And you wake up at the beginning of the day, not the end of it. Awakening means that you've finally found the stairway to heaven, but you're only on the first step of a ten thousand step staircase. This experience has caused me to quit my old job, quit my relationship with my ex, quit my old eating habits, quit a whole hell of a lot of bad stuff for me and basically just quit my old life. The things I used to care about seem pretty trivial now. Now, I've become focused on health and nutrition as my new career as well as holistic medicine and the study of human energy fields. I never used to exercise much, but now I make it a point to spend time outdoors whenever I can. I now eat a mostly vegan diet. I have quit smoking cigarettes. I have quit caffeine. I have quit refined sugars. I have quit eating fake foods. I spend at least an hour a day in a meditative state. I now see a beauty and an interconnectedness in the world that I never truly appreciated before. I love life and all who inhabit this world. I even write poetry from time to time (in my first 30 yrs of life, I always considered poetry to be the most useless thing, ever). My life has forever been transformed. I have probably read over a hundred books now since my "experience" on subjects ranging from spirituality to psychology to neurology to psychic development to astrology to veganism to holistic healing to history to quantum physics. The experience left me starving for knowledge, and I'm still pretty hungry for knowledge to this day. I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be. And it all started with meditation. I tell you my story to let you know that, yes, it's real. But I also tell you my story to warn you. Please do not follow my path. It's dangerous. I nearly ended up killing myself and didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any real training. I didn't have any guidance. All I did was find a backdoor shortcut to God/the Source, but I wasn't ready for it. The proper way would be to practice meditation for years under the guidance of a true master. After being afraid to meditate for a while due to my experience, I have since returned back to the practice and am now doing it in a more wholesome and balanced way. I am learning to integrate all of my experience into the "real world," so that I can make my insights useful to both myself and society. They say that people want to have spiritual experiences until they get them. I now know how true that statement is. It can be a big burden and a lot of responsibility. The path of the spiritual seeker is the most difficult of all. Now I know why guys like Jesus and Buddha told people that they had to be willing to give up everything. Because that's what I had to give up. My whole life. I am not a guru. I am not a sage. I'm just a guy sharing his story. I am not a particularly "serene" person. I am a bit of a heretic and a wise ass. I am not here to tell you the purpose of your life or what to do. You must figure that out on your own. Trust your heart and the rest will take care of itself. Namaste and peace be with you all.
that was very well written but man... you took it to the extreme! not gonna lie though, ive tried so many methods in becoming 'more enlightened' even though it's not necessary to deprive ourselves of food and sleep, time spent in silence is essential.. our internal world and the way that it relates with the external world is in turn the way the universe responds to you.. the process is very real as well as the purging of emotion and conditioned patterns.. things will become apparent to you and it comes down to an individual's decision to step into that new light and vibration by fully accepting the old when it is being brought to the forefront of your consciousness... ive been doing energy work with people, and with what ive experienced, i believe that with the right guidance one can have that flash of awakening, learn to tame the mind and point their energy toward a desired reality it really all comes down to practice.. not because practice makes perfect... but with a clear mind you can trust your body to guide you
Wow thats by the far the craziest thing Ive ever read on GC. What an experience.. Im really surprised you would even want to take it so extreme, that just came out of nowhere? I understand what ya say about spiritual experiences, it is life's most sharpest double sword. Ive had really, really good, and some really bad effects from my spiritual awakenings as Id call them, but I wouldnt change them for the world. They made me really understand people and allow me to be completely myself. Love life, and be the best person I can be for myself and all others. Be honest, compassionate, unselfish, true to your heart. Ive seen colors on deep meditations as well, and been completely "gone" and have experienced those great pleasures, I tell people its better then any drug high. I definitely haven't gone as far as you though, Ive been meditating for about 4 years now 30 min- an hour a day. Not every day though. Even a 30 min session of some good meditating where you can shut off your mind can make you feel light as a feather for the next 24 hours. Blissful feeling.
I used to meditate, I started seeing auras 2-3 weeks after doing it daily. I still see auras to this day even after I stoped meditating. But something is telling that I should start again sometime in the near future.
Since we're on a forum for stoners lol. Does weed slow down your progress in meditation? Might have already been asked but dont feel like trying to find it
Yes and no. Weed can expand your mind and loosen you up. It can alter your consciousness and make you more creative. These are good things, but you probably already know this. Many stoners claim that weed helps them meditate, but the problem is, they're not really meditating. They're mostly just relaxing and letting their mind be calm and free. But that's not meditation. Meditation is the disciplining of the mind. It's basically a mental workout. It's something that requires razor sharp focus and absolute concentration. You want to eventually be able to produce total stillness of the mind. Meditation is hard. If you've ever smoked weed, then you know that it makes you relax, which is the opposite of razor sharp focus and absolute concentration. Weed gives you the munchies. Meditation is best done on an empty stomach. Weed also detaches you somewhat from bodily sensation and can even make you clumsy. When you meditate, you want the opposite. You want to be totally in sync with your body. Weed makes you lazy. Meditation demands persistent mental effort. Weed affects your short term memory ("Dude, where's my car?"). You don't want anything to affect your ability to control your mind. While smoking weed may make you feel like you're expanding your mind, you'll eventually hit a ceiling due to the fact that marijuana is too "stoney." Also, dependency on weed, or anything for that matter, in order to meditate puts you into the mentality of a "cheater," one who admits defeat before he even gives himself a chance at success. You can't cheat with meditation. You wouldn't smoke a blunt at the beginning of a marathon to make you run faster. Likewise, you wouldn't smoke weed to make you meditate better. You wouldn't smoke a joint right before your wedding because it's a "special moment" that you want to fully "be there" for. Likewise, meditation is a special, sacred moment you want to fully "be there" for too. Save the green for relaxing and having fun. Weed has it's place. But some things in life are better without Taco Bell munchies and feeling loopy. Namaste
I think I probably relied on cannabis far too much once I discovered how much it helped me. It has the ability to 'cut corners' off the amount of time it might otherwise take to realise certain things, but without having a real discipline, doesn't necessarily create the kind of solidity that many years of sober, disciplined, meditation will. I admire those who follow the true disciplined path (perhaps they were just never introduced to MJ) but it seems like for many here in the West, where we want everything now with as little effort as possible, or our lifestyle just doesn't promote this way of being, the cannabis short cut method is better than no method at all.
Hm, I would argue that there's no shortcut at all. Because a teen's 15 year old mind would'nt differ that much more than a another 15 yearold who does'nt toke on average. It's a tool that makes things comfortable. Like wearing a glove when you're hammering down multiple nails. Some people may thing the glove get's in the way and others think it helps. Just different optimal paths for individuals.
You think there's no difference between today's texting, game-playing, woman-watching, drinking, smoking, western 15 year old, and one raised in Tibet who's about to become a monk and begin meditating daily for the rest of his life? You're right though. Different paths for different people. Had cannabis not come into my life when it did, I doubt I would have followed anything like the path I have. So I'm not trying to say it has less value than one who achieves similar things through a strict disciplined non cannabis approach, only their path being a harder one will have something that the easier one could lack. I'll never know of course, and it's only my own speculation anyway.
The comparison between the two minds was meant to be limited between individuals with identical personalities and environment except one decides to pick up cannabis. They're going probably have the identical hobbies , taste in music and friends. and we wouldn't say that one is more mature than the other. I'm just saying that a person that meditates and puts equal effort than the other guy with no drugs isn't necessarily more or less spiritual , so I don't agree that it's a shortcut.
Ah, no, I wasn't saying more spiritual, just more accomplished. To be able to meditate sober the way someone else can high reveals certain aspects that aren't easily obvious.