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Meditation and quirky side effects.
Earthninja
WandererWest Australia Veteran
in Meditation
Namaste all,
I thought I'd start a thread about some funny side effects of meditation. You can include mind blowing insights but id just like to see what side effects you guys have had and maybe if one happens to me I'll know it's normal!
Here's some of mine, the feeling you are sideways or even upside down in the room.
The feeling of all senses disappearing into nothingness. Almost like a void.
The observing of breath that gets so refined that the breath disappears!
Random thoughts of a past but they aren't your own?!!
The feeling of all experience expanding and you can't find yourself anymore! Just sounds and feelings in nothing! Haha.
I thought I'd start a thread about some funny side effects of meditation. You can include mind blowing insights but id just like to see what side effects you guys have had and maybe if one happens to me I'll know it's normal!
Here's some of mine, the feeling you are sideways or even upside down in the room.
The feeling of all senses disappearing into nothingness. Almost like a void.
The observing of breath that gets so refined that the breath disappears!
Random thoughts of a past but they aren't your own?!!
The feeling of all experience expanding and you can't find yourself anymore! Just sounds and feelings in nothing! Haha.
1
Comments
Oh gosh! That happens to me - even before I ever meditated. Well, some of it - for real. Mostly kidding, but I do know some of those...I had 2 quick episodes where I was in the void and it was terrifying, and this other guy that I'd been talking to about it, had a similar first-time experience within a couple days of mine. I think even that was before I started meditating but I was talking on this other forum about non-duality and such things.
I find that if I constantly evaluate the effects, then I go looking for them in later meditations.
Though the days of my longer meditations, I have excellent sleep and really crazy dreams. I get the same effect from longer yoga sessions.
@Earthninja
Meditation can be a periscope over the top edge of our identities sandbox or it can be the transcendence of that sandbox
Try measuring any of those meditative quirky side effects (periscope views) against the prajnaparamita sutra which best describes stepping beyond that sandbox.
It will explain why Meditation teachers will consistently say,
"interesting quirky effect...so... what's up with you right now!" to have you not stop and attach to the periscopes view when their real job is to show you how to step out beyond the bounds of that sandbox.
You get many kind of responses if you poke your brain, for sure.
How long have you been meditating, OP? I'd say you're making good progress.
I'm wondering if maybe the memories of a past that doesn't seem to belong to you might be past-life memories arising.
Did you begin your meditation practice with guidance from a teacher, or are you just winging it? Just wondering. Not sure what you mean by "the breath disappears". Do you mean that it becomes so subtle, it seems to disappear? Some traditions emphasize deep breathing, others don't.
What I notice is that after some experience with meditation, I have occasional moments when going about daily activities when time suddenly slows down to the point that it's almost like entering a different dimension; time and space become one, and acquire an unusual depth, as all the senses are heightened. Kind of hard to describe, but I think it's the result of practicing a mental discipline that constantly brings our thoughts back to the breath, or to the moment, and keeps them focussed there.
@how thanks, I really do try not get attached to any experience. I always just return to breath. Until it disappears. Haha.
@Dakini I've been meditating for about 1.5 years or so. This meditation is tranquility meditation or Anapansati(spelling?)
I also did Vipassana but I'm trying to sharpen the mind and then go through Vipassana. Taught by S.N. Goenka
The breath becomes so subtle it's unnoticeable. There is no more awareness on the breath. Quiet a blissful experience. Like being in a warm dream?!
It normally starts with a speeding up of the breath, I've read that as access concentration.
The memories don't feel like my own so I don't know. ?!
I've had uncomfortable feelings in my sittings a few times before, it is a feeling that makes my body feel like a marble.
It is all normally quirky, all a dream, all a drifting of awareness, all a bubble on a wave ... Wyrd [sic] stuff is just a label for unusual interpretations of the usual developments.
The smoothness of your breath is excellent, much better than mine. Euphoria is nice enough but in essence is empty and nothing wyrd.
If you can maintain the smoothness of breath and emptiness into 'non cushion time' you might notice more quirks in time ...
I had another one that made feel like I was spinning in circles, and one that made me feeling like i'm shrinking, little distracting things like that.
"Meditation and quirky side effects."
(Things can't get any more quirkier than that)....
One might become a psycho Oopss I mean psychic
Lately I have something similar fairly often. In "good" sits the sense of breath may become shallow, subtle and profoundly easy. I don't think it has ever quite made it to unnoticeable however. I put good in quotes because I do avoid expecting this to happen and I avoid grading my sits.
Do you think you might have been dozing off when that happened?
Yeah, I was right on the verge of falling asleep lol
Exactly so.
Weird stuff is irrelevant distraction and eventually just 'normal' at which point not worth mentioning. Far more important is how your practice is increasing calm, grounding, increasing insight, compassion and skilfull behaviour. Nothing quirky in that certainty.
Que? Is this what Hinayanaism does to you?
I think you are developing Hinaphobia my crustacean friend.