Or if combined with some other vulnerabilities...
297 karma · joined March 29, 2017
Anyone got any suggestions for options?
I haven't had a full-blown conscious experience, but I have been woken up in the middle of the night feeling like I've been connected to the mains, so much energy surging through me. I've had experiences in meditation where the energy was overwhelming and I've had to stop.
Could this be the gateway to some more profound experience? I certainly find it believable and intend to find out.
Re 'the purpose of emptiness' - I completely agree it's a difficult subject and I certainly don't claim to be all the way down the path or have all the answers. However, I've had glimpses. See my other comments.
Emptiness can have this negative pursuit of denial, but in fact I believe that's not the correct practice. Of course a person is a person, and trying to deny that is a fallacy. I think it comes from misunderstanding teachings. It can be useful to have a knowledgeable teacher to discuss questions like this so we don't stray too far from the path. Meditation is a difficult thing to put into words so it's easy to get the wrong end of the stick and sometimes stray a bit, especially when you take into account the confusion of translating subtle concepts between languages, and a lot of parroting from people with little direct experience. Still, the good news is there are more and more Westerners having experiences who can help clarify things.
Meditation should make our lives richer. Looking at my own past behaviours, I realised I do what I do because I want to feel amazing. Some part of me believes I should be able to have peak experiences, and meditation has given me some. This begs the question - is this yearning to feel amazing because it's possible to live like that permanently, and I intuitively know this? That'd be a game changer. I mean, if I naturally just felt totally contented and ecstatically happy (incidentally I didn't understand what 'ecstasy' meant until just a few weeks ago when I began to experience that too), how would I live?
I certainly wouldn't drift trying to be 'nothing'. I'd have to share it. Or enjoy it. Or do something with it I imagine. But it would certainly make my life richer and more enjoyable.
Right now there are a lot of people who claim to teach yoga but just know a few postures. Also, if we look to the past, many of the traditions have been kept secret for hundreds of years. I've heard rumours that some schools of Zen eventually secretly teach the microcosmic orbit to their higher-level students after decades of practice. I've heard of Eastern Taoists being astonished at some of the practices that Westerners know, saying that some of them are still highly secret in the East.
So one problem is in the traditions. You were expected to take this lifelong pledge to a guru who drip-fed you (partly because the student could be seen as the guru's 'pension'), and that doesn't work for us now. Some of the more effective practices should be taught earlier to give both sides of a practice, energetic and meditative, and so we are rewarded with improvements in our lives which stimulates more desire to practice. I put a link to the excellent AYP in my other comment and I really suggest you check it out for a complete resource.
But one thing is certain: Kundalini can in no way be classified as "just a bunch of feelings". You only need to read Gopi Krishna to learn that.
In fact, I should really say you operate from a place which is 'before thought', since 'beyond' suggests something after the thinking process. Actually it can almost feel like thinking is a strenuous burden in this state, which suggests you're 'before' the thinking process.
Observing thoughts while still operating from "within your mind", which it sounds like you're describing, doesn't necessarily lead to that experience.
It's a shift in perception to something that lets you view thoughts without getting caught up in them. So countering one thought with another isn't it because then you're still in thoughts. However...
The reason this is tricky is because a logical process can be used to reach this realisation - indeed I experienced this state while working with the koan "Who am I?" on a Zen retreat. As I continued to ask myself that question I "took myself apart". I deduced that "I" wasn't my body (because when I sleep my body remains but "I" don't), that I wasn't my thoughts (because I can observe them), nor the other "aggregates" as they're called in Buddhism. The one that I'd struggled with was my awareness, but I realised "I" wasn't even that.
Through this process of logical deduction I realised on some deeper level that I just fundamentally didn't need to pay any attention at all to my thoughts. They became as insignificant as if someone had left a radio on. Note that this is different to just the usual meditative technique of observing thoughts. At this stage, there is no technique involved, it's just how you operate at that time.
So then what? I just ignored them! Totally. I didn't try to shut them off, I literally didn't care if they were there, and I didn't pay any attention to them. In doing so I just felt so at peace. I didn't need to do anything to reach step 2. There is no step 2 :-D.
This is called "non-doing" in Taoism, and this serenity is claimed to be our "natural" state - that's to say if you view our continual pandering to thoughts as "unnatural", which it did strike me as. More like a big, habitual mistake to be honest. I guess this is also called "transcending the ego".
So I'd stand around at this farm where the retreat was happening. I didn't care that there were sheep in the field, but there were. I didn't care when it rained or if it didn't. At meal times I could see when something needed doing, and I did it, but I didn't care for it. I just felt deeply contented.
So it's very different from recognising an optical illusion, unless it's at a level where the recognition goes to your core and causes you to absolutely ignore your thinking mind, and not feed thoughts on any level (even sub-vocally).
Now the tricky part is it's so habitual to fall back into listening to your mind. I haven't experienced that state since the retreat (although it did last for a couple of weeks). However, it proved to me beyond doubt that it exists. It also has made me re-evaluate my life, why I do what I do, and what's important to me.
Meditation can certainly be boring, but it's not necessarily training yourself to be bored. There are many different facets depending on the style of meditation you practice:
* Zen might get you enquire into yourself why you're getting bored, why you always need to feel some high, and ultimately, who am I? This may then lead you to realise that you are not your personality. Then you may find your consciousness shifts a little to something more fundamental, where you can see your thoughts just as thoughts and not "you". That fundamental state (called by some 'no mind') is blissful, serene, calm. It's a truly wonderful state of being and I'm fortunate to have had a good glimpse.
* Alternatively, Buddhists may teach you to just observe your experiences, not getting caught up in them, leading to the above experiences too.
* Taoists and certain yogic schools might suggest you sit there circulating your energy around, so you're certainly not 'doing nothing'. This can lead to some states that are nothing less than ecstatic.
The most effective form of meditation I've done (in ~15 years) combines both - energy movement followed by meditation. It seems ultimately that most paths converge on these two aspects, it's just a question of efficiency.
The results are incredible. I feel confident they will shift my baseline level of happiness up.
As a specific example, this week I experienced that there is a point located above the soft palette in the mouth, that when touched by the tip of the tongue (under certain conditions) results in a feeling close to orgasm. I was literally laughing when I discovered this. It's an incredible, ecstatic feeling.
For anyone who wants to know more, check out the free lessons at https://www.aypsite.org which are the clearest and most complete I've ever found. The specific practice above is called Khechari Mudra. Don't take my word for it, or the word of the guy who wrote those lessons. There's only one way you'll ever convince yourself about this stuff... practice for yourself :-)
Good luck!
The golden rule of business: If you're onto a sweet money-maker, don't shout about it.
I'm currently working on a competitor to a site I read about that bragged about their business model, and if they'd have kept it to themselves they'd be facing one less competitor...
No there's not, but it's a royal pain the arse to have to keep passing them up through your function calls to the level that actually cares about them and will do something about them. Try/catch eliminates boilerplate.
Anyone know whether this is right?
And BTW in case you're not aware, if you hold data from any EU citizens you'll be required to comply with the GDPR regardless of where you're located.
To elaborate, in some spoken languages you have adjective noun (e.g. blue house), but in others the order is reversed (casa azul). At some point of learning you just subconsciously know which form to use. This is similar to programming when you can use the appropriate idioms in each language. E.g. using duck typing in python vs type checks/conditionals etc. in Java.
* Unfortunately error handling sucks (no stacktrace by default? Let's go back to the days of peppering print statements around just for fun).
* DB support is terrible (I've spent hours doing what I could have done in half an hour with python).
* It's so verbose, even simple things like mapping over an array to create another array requires a for-loop dance. Same for just checking if a value is in an array. Same, obviously for no exceptions which you either love or hate. I hate.
I can't see myself doing any other projects with it.
Might as well not pretend something is an ORM if it can't do the fundamentals (like upserts), fully hydrating structs, etc.