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> "Bad" feelings have lost their edge. When I sat with the feeling I discovered there is nothing "bad" about it. [...] With this I have become lighter, freer, happier and more at peace with the experience just as it is, right here, right now.

I'd like to give a heads up that this can and may come crashing down[1]. The 'Dark Night of the Soul' is a very real phenomena, and it can happen out of nowhere -- just a normal meditation session.

I'd suggest giving a search to 'mindfulness' and 'mental distress' or some such, if you continue on with this. It is really helpful to find a framework -- like Buddhism or Raja Yoga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with...) -- before diving too deep, to give you something to fall back on when it happens, otherwise it can result in quite unpleasant, hard to overcome and understand situations. Edit to add: The specific framework doesn't matter as much as having one at all (Christianity/Islam/Buddhism/Yoga/etc.).

[1] I just found this article but it seems a decent overview to me: https://ronyabanks.com/the-meditators-dark-night-of-the-soul...

This is really important. GP's experience is beautiful. Yet, I recently read an article[] describing how there's very little help available to people who perhaps meditate too much and end up in spiritual crisis; meditation is sold as this panacea in our western world.

> hackingthelema

Love the user name. Would also love if you read my top-level comment on this thread.

[] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-power...

Thanks for raising this issue. I had to back from meditation entirely due to disassociation and energetic unwellness. Heavy physical exercise helped get me back in the body.

Great point. I have forgotten about this. There were at least 2, one heavy, one less so, periods early on of pretty profound depression. The first lasted maybe 2 or 3 days. It was a dark hole of just a profound sense of loss. I was taken back at first and questioned what I was getting into and stopped meditating for a few days but I got through it. I wish I could edit my comment to add this warning. Thank you for bringing this up.

Yeah, it's important to point out the difficulties that can arise. Though I'd say that the framework could also cause problems if your experience falls outside of it.

I had an experience along these lines when I was 22 and meditating daily, which ended up turning into anxiety and somewhat frequent panic attacks. I ended up giving up my daily practice for about 10 years because of it. My frame of reference was the very common Theravada practices you encounter in the west, but my experiences didn't make sense to me until I began reading Mahayana teachings and found my way to Vajrayana practice.

So I'd say the framework is important, but to be flexible with it as you encounter things that aren't maybe a part of the core teaching. In my case it was the teachings on emptiness that opened things, which is something the Theravada doesn't emphasize (although it's there).

Great advice! I think I may have been a little too flippant in saying 'use whatever framework' because perspective is incredibly important. I'd say it's a continual process and engagement; if your philosophy or religion or sect doesn't answer it, and you don't feel good about it, it's okay to expand your horizons.

I think what I wanted to emphasise is having nothing at all can leave you in a bad position. Hitting these dreary spiritual states without any philosophic or religious framework that can provide perspective is like being lost out in the sea without even a life preserver, much less a boat.

Yes, absolutely! I'm constantly frustrated by the trend of selling meditation as some sort of productivity hack. It's at best misguided and at worst dangerous.

What you are describing is an experience sought after by those practicing "nondual" meditation. Tibetan buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Taoism are the major traditions in the east that practice this, though zen could also potentially be considered nondualist. I'm currently in a class taught by Michael Taft that takes a syncretic approach to teaching nondual meditation [1]. One of the best books on the subject is "Nonduality" by David Loy [2].

Michael mentioned that some people can achieve it right away with a single meditation and others take years. Sounds like you are in the former category. Unfortunately I'm in the latter.

[1] https://deconstructingyourself.com/nondual-awareness-meditat...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Nonduality-Buddhism-David-R-Loy/dp/16...

Spira talks a lot about nondual. I'm on board. I'll check out your books. Thank you!

Try googling 45 Days to Awakening course, a new and improved version of the Finder’s Course. Their data shows something like 65% of people reach that state after 45 days, up to 85% after a second course for total of 90 days. It sounds way too good to be true and I didn’t believe it myself until I did it and it worked for me, and then for several friends I convinced to take it. It took me over 90 days to get there (had to keep practicing the meditation styles that worked best for me) but then stabilized. One of my friends transitioned literally on her first meditation on day one. Good luck on your journey!

Typical scam website.

I suppose many of us have had such experience one way or the other. My exploration on such path had different phases. One important milestone I felt was, when our angels and demons calm and come to an agreement on some terms the inner spirit or I call the human takes charge. After which I feel free to observe the emotions and carry on with the same things but in a better and a conscious manner. Emotions of sympathy/attachment, anger, greed, envy and pride will all be still there but can be better managed and learnt that it's only necessary in this practical world.

It's been about 3 years and counting since I've had such experience and since then every morning I'm trying to balance my mind like an audio equalizer :)

A good construct I found along the way was to substitute envy with competition, pride with work, greed with giving, attachment/indifference with love. Neither of them too much that it'll consume me nor too little to keep me empty. If none of this works then find something else like a child. Anger is a beast of its own that I someday I intend to figure out.

Cheers and Happy new year everybody

Yes! Your experience is closest to mine. I tried Sam Harris's meditation, Joseph Goldstein's insight meditation, and came across "The Headless Path". This led to multiple moments where my consciousness expanded to fill it's container, in this case my old apartment, or a bar where I was playing music, or a shore next to a lake. It's almost like I became a 3D VR panorama of what I could sense, my center fell away and I fully absorbed the hundreds of sensations as one giant sphere.

In this style, douglas Hardings Headless Path, you're attempting to realize that in some sense, "you" are not in your head. That's where we "feel" like we're centered, mostly because our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth are there. But even in reality, we can look for evidence of our head and find we don't have one. All we see is a dark void behind our nose. And behind that, we can feel what, our headache or sinuses, or the back of our head. But how are these "behind" our eyes? Aren't they just in a big cloud of sensation, too? And if we open our eyes, and let our gaze stretch and expand very widely, we might literally become absorbed into our surroundings, we'll feel like the world, not just a head.

Really amazing feelings. I encourage folks try insight, mindfulness, and headless path meditation.

Rad, i'll look into this "headless path". I like trying to expand the fuzzy cloud while meditating sometimes which sounds like it's along those lines.

While I'm not necessarily a Sam Harris fan in general, I am a huge fan of his Waking Up app. It's approachable, serene, sacred (but also no-nonsense), and really just beautiful. And useful! I can't say enough good things about it.

I sometimes have a similar feeling to you with my sense of self but rather than an expansion into infinity, it was a shrinking of my "soul" or a shrinking of me the viewer and letting my body do the outside world experiencing. It's like I retreat into a tiny control room in my brain where nobody can see me or hurt me and I let my body do the work of experiencing things as I watch. It's kind of similar in that my body becomes one with everything and my self shrinks so much that it's nothing.

Nice, similar exp. Check Bernardo Kastrup. Good friend of Spira, computer scientist who worked at CERN, now pushing idealism which is essentially western Advaita Vedanta.

I'm going thru Bernardo Kastrup's site now. Thank you.

I think he shines best either in his books (the first, "Rationalist Spirituality" is very short and gives a good intro to his thought) or in YT interviews. The one with John Vervaeke or Curt Jaimungal are good picks. The blog is interesting but tend to also be an outlet for personal tantrums :) I've started a telegram channel to chit-chat about this topic.

Anyway I guess the only relevant thing I want to share is that there are at least 2 paths to build for ourselves a consistent, integral worldview (one where meaning can be found, as meaning can only be found where there is structure): Propositional to Participative, or Participative to Propositional. That is, satisfy the brain, and open up the space to the transcendental, or go all the way into direct experience and then let the brain catch up. BK is path #1, Spira is path #2, and they have been very helpful to me.

I've just watched a few of his vids he links to on his site, very interesting. I just read https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/04/conquering-fear-of-o... so well put. I'll read Rationalist Spirituality. Thanks again. Fascinating.

Had something like that reading Herman Hesse as teenager. I learnt that I don't need to be or feel "good", necessarily. What you describe fits a lot what I experienced then. I don't give much importance to that but I think that plays a big role on what I have become. I point at the truth (as good as I can) and people think I am judgemental but I am absolutely not because I don't care about good or bad, generally.

Then I heard Jordan Peterson, I think, pointing out that all emotions are useful. They are there because they have an evolutive advantage. For example the feeling of winning makes you play more, and losing makes you step back at some point and observe what happened (you cannot take it out of your head easily).

For those that want the same experience without meditating :)

I recommend that you pick up a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. It may really resonate with you as well as deepen your insight. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0834800527/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_MK...

This is the philosophy that Steve Jobs followed, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes but please don't hold that against Zen Buddhism.

I'll check this out. Thanks!

Great! I think you may get a lot out of it, and I wish you well on your journey. It's without question the most-loved Zen-related book in the English language, and there are many them. It has greatly enriched many people's Buddhist practice, including mine.

...and the experience you describe is very, very resonant with Zen Buddhism.