Anxiety from Bliss

Amida

I'm curious if anyone else here has experienced this.

Lastnight, I was meditating upon duality/nonduality, then I laid down, shut my eyes, relaxed, and I began to experience high rushes of bliss. It's like I was beholding something breathtaking beyond discription, and it created a feeling of indescribable awe. In the mind's eye all I could see is pure white.

But, when I began to experience these rushes of bliss, I remembered how people see white light and experience bliss in "Near Death Experiences", so I started wondering if something was wrong with my heart and I wasn't getting enough oxygen to my brain. Upon that I became very anxious. Then I started wondering if I was just losing my mind. Well, today I'm still alive and appear to be getting oxygen to my brain, and it appears I haven't lost my mind.

Does anyone else experience bliss in this way, and have you ever become anxious from it? Any advice on what to do when you begin to experience bliss to this degree?

Cloud

Something. I once thought I was dying because I could no longer detect my own breathing, but I resolved to push through it and I'm still here. Some deep forms of meditation can be scary at first because you're detaching from your normal experience and the mind doesn't know what's going on (and not-knowing can be frightening).

DhammaDhatu

Well, today I'm still alive and appear to be getting oxygen to my brain, and it appears I haven't lost my mind.

Hi Amida

Indeed. You haven't lost your mind. To realise you haven't lost your mind is an important & necessary lesson which will enable your mind to better accommodate the same depth of medition next time it occurs.

Does anyone else experience bliss in this way, and have you ever become anxious from it? Any advice on what to do when you begin to experience bliss to this degree?

My interpretation is the anxiety is not arising from the bliss. The anxiety arises from the mind of non-duality, from the expansiveness of consciousness, from entering into something new, which diminishes your mind's ordinary sense of self and being.

As I said before, each time your mind learns there is nothing to fear, its anxiety will lessen in these expanded states of awareness & consciousness, until there is only bliss & clarity, without the anxiety.

Kind regards & best wishes

:om:

genkaku

Upon that I became very anxious.
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@Amida -- This sense of anxiety is par for the course, I think. What it boils down to is ego, so-called. It is like seeing a very big wave and imagining you know all about the ocean. It can be simultaneously woo-hoo and eek. The only thing that works very well, I think, is a patient, continued, constant and determined practice. Gently, firmly ... practice.