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Strange, scary sensation
This morning while meditating I felt a strange, kind of scary sensation while meditating. I can not make much sense of it so I ask the people of this site which have more experience than me if they can help. I'm not good at explaining things, but anyway. I was calm and concentrated. Following the breath extremely well. Mindfulness was great. Concentration felt refined. I think I was deeper than I'd ever been. Totally in the moment.
Then a strange sensation developed. It felt as there was a growing distance between my breath and the perception of my breath. The touch feelings of my two hands placed together was also widening, feeling very far away. Floating further and further away. The sense of distance felt really real. At the same time my head, legs and arms felt like they were expanding or getting bigger. It kind of felt like when u tingling in a part of ur body, but it was pretty much in my whole body.
The part where it got scary was a panic response almost set in. I had to open my eyes and have a drink of water to bring myself back. I didn't know where it was all leading, I tried observing it which made the sensations... deeper. This makes me sad because is this what is going to happen when I go deeper in meditation? I don't know what happened. Was I losing something? I don't think I explained it very well but, I tried! Thanks for reading.
Then a strange sensation developed. It felt as there was a growing distance between my breath and the perception of my breath. The touch feelings of my two hands placed together was also widening, feeling very far away. Floating further and further away. The sense of distance felt really real. At the same time my head, legs and arms felt like they were expanding or getting bigger. It kind of felt like when u tingling in a part of ur body, but it was pretty much in my whole body.
The part where it got scary was a panic response almost set in. I had to open my eyes and have a drink of water to bring myself back. I didn't know where it was all leading, I tried observing it which made the sensations... deeper. This makes me sad because is this what is going to happen when I go deeper in meditation? I don't know what happened. Was I losing something? I don't think I explained it very well but, I tried! Thanks for reading.
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Comments
Consciousness or awareness plays all kinds of tricks and makes all kinds of adjustments in meditation.
Think back again to your experience. Did anything harmful happen to you apart from the arising of fear?
Let it go & continue meditating is my recommendation.
You must let consciousness flow and weird experiences will definitely happen.
It is just the mind 'changing gear' like a car changes gear.
Be well. Be at ease. Develop equinimity & trust.
Kind regards
DDhatu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-wyaP6xXwE
The demons seem to be very active in your practice.
Hi,
You explained it quite well. I would neither be influenced by this; nor frightened by it. Things happen during upachara samadhi / access concentration. These can be called charisms or makyos. Try reciting the metta sutta or the chant of metta. Or do the silent compassion meditation. Those are effective at combating the fear / anxiety / panic response. The anxiety response in normal for sentient beings. For one thing, it prevents us from plunging head long into the unknown; thus avoiding unanticipated dangers that might lurk there. It is telling us to 'look before you leap.' Once the new terrain becomes familiar, and deemed safe, the anxiety naturally subsides.Anxiety is like yellow alert, it means proceed with caution. Panic is more extreme; it is like 'red alert' -- the fight, flight, or play dead syndrome.
Other things can happen during access concentration. There might be intense visions; like a runners high on steroids. There might be voices. The thing to know is that once the first level of absorption is reached, the scary stuff subsides by itself. S9 and I touched on two subjects; The Five Hindrances and Metta-Karuna Bhavana or Compassion Meditation, in another thread. We talked about starting a new thread covering both; or separate ones for each. They are related; because compassion meditation is so useful in overcoming the hindrances. On the other hand, there is enough information to justify two threads.
I believe this is why the Tibetan masters keep many teachings to even many monks.
Maybe some more experienced practitioners could expand on this.
OMG it's amazing because I felt the exact same thing once. I was leaning to a wall and it felt later as if I was becoming like a wall. The distance between my hands and my face was becoming increasingly wide. I also had to open my eyes but I didn’t panic because I fortunately did read about similar stories before.
Once a monk said when I was watching a discussion on youtube that while he was doing walking meditation he experience that he sunk into the floor and then he was thrown about 20 feet up and his body bursted into several different pieces which hung on trees. Ewww…
My uncle once experienced that his body was covered with worms and he had to stop his meditation. A friend of mine once experienced that she drowned in water upto the nose and was looking at a huge statue of Buddha.
These are all metal perceptions. They don’t have much to do with anything as far as I know so if you can ignore the sensation and continue with the meditation it is best. It helps to slowly bring your mindfulness back to the breath. But in most cases they just disturb the meditation