[Later edit]: I thought better of publishing this, and am checking back in on the content 3 1/2 years later. Why not mention it, since few people read this blog anyway?
It's about meditation, something that happened once during that, and I suppose it could be interpreted as being about lots of other things, about something vague and spiritual, or even about death. I'll start with the event itself, what happened, and then never really will get far with interpretation. It sort of goes without saying that this was "all in my head," given the subject matter. That's the part I could be clearer on, what it means, how "real" one could say it is, but as for me I don't say. I tried to place it more back when it happened, around 25 years ago now, but I let that drop after awhile. I went on to study Buddhism more formally in two philosophy and religion degree programs, but instead of being about sorting this out all that was about communicating things I had found out. That didn't really work.
To begin, I had a strange feeling once when meditating. For anyone interested in dismissing most of the rest I can explain that was in my younger days, during a stint as a ski-bum, and it was kind of a given that people were exposed to different drugs back then, and I'm not saying that wasn't a factor. It was a different time, the early 90s, but things haven't changed so much. Except that where I was, Colorado, has since legalized the drug that was already most common then, marijuana. It didn't seem like such a big deal back then but it was illegal; now personal use of it in that state is not. I was using marijuana regularly then and had experimented with different psychedelic drugs.
It started with feeling an unusual anxiety. Feeling a bit of anxiety related to using marijuana is completely normal; that's a main side-effect. I had just taken a couple of weeks off of that habit, due to preparing for a drug test for a job I was applying for. Drifting off into considering strange ideas also wouldn't be so uncommon. For people that have no exposure to the drug it's perhaps not as intense or unusual as people may expect related to drug use. Or maybe it really is; people growing marijuana have put lots of effort into increasing the potency and types of effects over the last 20 or 30 years, and it's hard to imagine where that has led now. This was different though, not really an experience related to some crazy strain or "getting too high." It's hard to summarize, but I'll give it a go.
I had been meditating for awhile, nothing too serious or interesting, so I relaxed to focus a bit. It may be familiar to anyone doing yoga--which I did a little of, in part related to being flexible for the snowboarding I did then--that breathing adjustment is part of that. It's nothing too far out there. It just turns out that to relax your mind or focus your body developing even and deep breathing helps. It's funny how it seems to actually work both ways; when you are relaxed your breathing naturally deepens, even seems to "come from" a different place, to change from chest breathing to more stomach / diaphragm based breathing instead. All that gets to be a long subject so I'll leave it at that, that getting in the habit of adjusting breathing to be a bit slower and more from the stomach can help someone relax.
[Another later aside]: I took up yoga again seven months ago now, in a completely different form than that earlier practice, which was on my own, without instruction, based on using a text for reference. At that time I would do a series of a dozen or so standard poses, all relatively slowly, trying to relax into those positions. This required changing breathing and letting muscles and bones settle into relatively unfamiliar positions, releasing a lot of held tension to accomplish that.
The yoga practice I had been doing recently was with an instructor, and it was more a cross between that sort of practice and calisthenics. There were themes to individual classes, like Intro, Essential, Stretching, Twisting, Core Strength, and onto advanced ranges more likely to draw on Indian yoga category names. Sun Salutation variations came up a lot, guided to be practiced at a fast pace, so that physical conditioning also came into play, along with flexibility and balance. The breathing that instructor recommended was fast and rough, more timed to correspond with motions than to slow and relax the body.
I have no idea if the breathing part "worked;" I wasn't able to take the practice far enough to get a feel for that. My flexibility never really developed, related to not stretching in between classes, which I often only attended for one hour per weekend. Running was probably a negative factor. I would stretch before runs, which I'd typically do twice a week, but it seemed like leg flexibility decreased along with the leg muscle conditioning. Sitting at a desk for a work-week definitely didn't help, but then the yoga seemed to offset some of the impact of that.
[Back to the original writing]: But why do breathing exercises or practices? Relaxing is nice, but why go that next step, to link it to breathing. I was using yoga as stretching, which it sort of is, but it's also different, and you need calm breathing to be able to do some positions. Of course this relates to mental and physical state too, it's not just about some magical effect of breath, but it was all coupled naturally enough.
So just then, related to this meditation experience, I used regular breathing to calm myself--nothing interesting just yet. In a way it worked but it felt as if the anxiety ran deeper, as if I could somehow continue to follow that experience. I'd never really had any experience like that before, of being able to recognize and "follow" a feeling; I was only messing around with meditation a little. Oddly it seemed that I could really stay with that feeling, sort of explore it more deeply, in a sense I can't explain at all. Finally it seemed this experience of anxiety was really related to some deeper experience of fear. But what would I be afraid of, really, related to drifting off inside my own mind?
I can't convey what it was like but I want to say that it was like travelling into the experience, even though that makes no sense. I felt the normal experience of myself start to fade a bit as I did so. Finally I had a choice, to go back, to stop, or to release my apprehension over really experiencing this fear, and go on to see and experience what it really was. Oddly it seemed the reservation was over not existing in some sense, losing myself, since there seemed to be some core connection to ordinary perception that I was examining. Somehow it only seemed possible since I could set or "lock" my breath, to stabilize it as a slow form of diaphragm breathing.
[Back to the original writing]: But why do breathing exercises or practices? Relaxing is nice, but why go that next step, to link it to breathing. I was using yoga as stretching, which it sort of is, but it's also different, and you need calm breathing to be able to do some positions. Of course this relates to mental and physical state too, it's not just about some magical effect of breath, but it was all coupled naturally enough.
So just then, related to this meditation experience, I used regular breathing to calm myself--nothing interesting just yet. In a way it worked but it felt as if the anxiety ran deeper, as if I could somehow continue to follow that experience. I'd never really had any experience like that before, of being able to recognize and "follow" a feeling; I was only messing around with meditation a little. Oddly it seemed that I could really stay with that feeling, sort of explore it more deeply, in a sense I can't explain at all. Finally it seemed this experience of anxiety was really related to some deeper experience of fear. But what would I be afraid of, really, related to drifting off inside my own mind?
I can't convey what it was like but I want to say that it was like travelling into the experience, even though that makes no sense. I felt the normal experience of myself start to fade a bit as I did so. Finally I had a choice, to go back, to stop, or to release my apprehension over really experiencing this fear, and go on to see and experience what it really was. Oddly it seemed the reservation was over not existing in some sense, losing myself, since there seemed to be some core connection to ordinary perception that I was examining. Somehow it only seemed possible since I could set or "lock" my breath, to stabilize it as a slow form of diaphragm breathing.
None of this made any sense, and it still doesn't now, which is why I never communicate about it. I'm talking about vague feelings and interpretation of an odd experience.
It felt as if at a deep core of myself the connection to even experiencing, in general, related to this apprehension, an odd type of reservation or a desire, a fear of not being. Saying that "I felt fear" really doesn't do the experience justice. I wasn't afraid, in a conventional sense, like when you are in a bad neighborhood and you don't know what is going to happen next. Some part of that carried over though, a vague uncertainty, and a relatively tangible experience of fear itself. I let that go, just experienced it, and moved into the center of it instead of trying to avoid it. In that process I experienced flashes of my life, in a strange sense, but not like memories, like I felt connections dissolving. It was like I was gone, along with a normal form of experience.
It felt as if at a deep core of myself the connection to even experiencing, in general, related to this apprehension, an odd type of reservation or a desire, a fear of not being. Saying that "I felt fear" really doesn't do the experience justice. I wasn't afraid, in a conventional sense, like when you are in a bad neighborhood and you don't know what is going to happen next. Some part of that carried over though, a vague uncertainty, and a relatively tangible experience of fear itself. I let that go, just experienced it, and moved into the center of it instead of trying to avoid it. In that process I experienced flashes of my life, in a strange sense, but not like memories, like I felt connections dissolving. It was like I was gone, along with a normal form of experience.
There was another side. Things were already strange but this is where it gets more so. I'd stopped with the "I," so it was a different form of experience. It wasn't really sequential, not related to other types of experiences, not really sensory. The fear ceased, and "below" that was an unusual experience of selfless connection, an immersion, a dissolving. I didn't really seem to experience myself, but an odd kind of positive, broader energy, somehow tied to a sensory experience of light, even though I wasn't "seeing" anything in an ordinary sense. Without a normal flow of time for reference it was all not really clear.
And that was kind of it. It seemed a bit like the experience of light, so closer to that in terms of sensory scope, but just different, odd. Later I kind of came out of it, so it seemed I had really just fallen asleep, that it was an odd dream. And so it could have been, or so in a sense it really was; what else could internal experience be?
The really odd part was how it changed me; of course I could've just imagined that, or fell asleep and dreamt it. I was a good bit different after. That inner dialogue, inner voice we all naturally hear, went quiet. That alone would have been odd, to experience myself in a fundamentally different way than I ever had, but that wasn't the end of it. Things seemed different. It was kind of odd to experience at first, but meat seemed way too common to me to eat it, to what I was made of myself. I became a vegetarian, immediately, and didn't get back to eating meat for over a decade and a half (after some health problems; living in a country without many vegetarians--in Thailand--made it hard). There was nothing particularly idealistic about that part; it just seemed like a natural thing to do, as if actually eating meat should've seemed unnatural all along. I gave away what was in my refrigerator; the change was that fast.
After that
The really odd part was how it changed me; of course I could've just imagined that, or fell asleep and dreamt it. I was a good bit different after. That inner dialogue, inner voice we all naturally hear, went quiet. That alone would have been odd, to experience myself in a fundamentally different way than I ever had, but that wasn't the end of it. Things seemed different. It was kind of odd to experience at first, but meat seemed way too common to me to eat it, to what I was made of myself. I became a vegetarian, immediately, and didn't get back to eating meat for over a decade and a half (after some health problems; living in a country without many vegetarians--in Thailand--made it hard). There was nothing particularly idealistic about that part; it just seemed like a natural thing to do, as if actually eating meat should've seemed unnatural all along. I gave away what was in my refrigerator; the change was that fast.
I'd never had any significant experience of any "sixth sense" or anything like that but unusual things seemed apparent, things about to happen, or happening nearby out of sight, details about people. It would relate to a sense of expecting someone to walk in a door, to what was happening elsewhere, or in the immediate future. I didn't know what to make of that so I didn't make anything of it. It was just something odd that would happen. In one instance I had a strange impression of someone around that time and asked him if he had either had an unusual form of meditation experience or had died before, and he was surprised that I asked, since he had been resuscitated in relation to severe trauma from a car accident. I can't really describe what seemed different about him. He lacked the noise and roughness other people exhibit.
You might wonder how this relates to death, since I mentioned that, and so far it seems not to connect, beyond that odd example. I didn't really know how to interpret it, but the flashes of my self, not so much memories, but about connections, and the vague relation to light reminded me of those near-death stories. I don't think that I died, of course; in fact I know that I didn't. The part that seemed vague at the end, that I didn't say much about, seemed to relate to dissolution into the experience of a greater underlying whole.
You might wonder how this relates to death, since I mentioned that, and so far it seems not to connect, beyond that odd example. I didn't really know how to interpret it, but the flashes of my self, not so much memories, but about connections, and the vague relation to light reminded me of those near-death stories. I don't think that I died, of course; in fact I know that I didn't. The part that seemed vague at the end, that I didn't say much about, seemed to relate to dissolution into the experience of a greater underlying whole.
I did wonder if any of this related to how people are on a different level. That fear felt really fundamental, and of course the other experience had some odd universal connection feel to it. I don't know. I got the sense that the fear was connecting to something very basic and common, a fear of death, the kind of underlying experience we never really examine or couldn't really embrace, generally. My interpretation was that one main connection point we have to life experience is fear that it will end, that this ties us into a lot of how we see ourselves, setting up an underlying tension that we don't really consciously notice.
The rest, it seemed like somehow that related to what we really are. It didn't feel like I "came back" with answers, of course. I did get a sense we have nothing to worry about, in the broadest sense, that it's all connected, and ok on a level we never could experience, at least not as the selves we are. It seemed like the separation of individual self from everything else that we experience is mostly just misinterpretation, if that makes any sense. It seemed like a "self" is really just a collection of attachments, ideas, feelings, and expectations, but we aren't that at all.
Years went by and I never placed that experience. The effects of it that I just mentioned faded to some degree over time, some parts relatively quickly, some never really going back to a former form. I felt like I always was a much quieter person mentally than I'd ever been before, that my inner dialogue never really did resume in the same type of form. It did come back though. The odd effect of sensing things about to happen or insights about people faded quickly enough, maybe over a few weeks. Not a lot changed otherwise. It seemed I retained just a little capacity to stop being myself if I tried to. But why would I do that? It doesn't really shed light on the rest of this but a couple of reasons come to mind, purposes, and describing that works as a tangent.
It's sort of just a trick that someone can do, but it's easy to experience if someone else is lying if you experience how they experience themselves, if you change to be them instead. There's nothing to it; you just stop being yourself temporarily, and naturally absorb more of them. I've heard of a similar practice, or perhaps an identical one, described as exchanging self for another. It doesn't take any special ESP access to know what someone near you is experiencing, on some level, because they exhibit it in so many ways. Even without talking, but people are very expressive when they convert their thoughts into communication, even when they are guarded and filtered. Maybe especially then, in a limited sense, because you can sense a different kind of tension in them when there is a divide between what they say and what they think. Sometimes people who experience no core, inner other self can be scary. Being mentally quiet, consistent, and genuine is one thing, existing as a less ego-based self, but some people are pure randomness, just disjointed, to themselves there is no center. That alone doesn't make them bad people, but that form is really strange. It can work out badly.
This part is a bit of a different tangent, but aside from that, for sports purposes, an odd type of experience of selflessness can be useful. It turns out you can only perform a difficult physical task up to a certain level if you are thinking about what you are doing, because that overlays a "you" onto the experience, it creates a bit of a feedback loop, "you" do it, then you also analyze and experience it. It's more direct to just do it (like the Nike ad, right?).
This takes a different form, and makes sense in a different way, when the margin is so small for what you are doing to even be possible, when being completely in that moment is absolutely necessary, or else it won't happen. Snowboarding was a good example. I would "board" bumps / moguls (actual terrain features caused by people making turns, like a small mound maybe two yards / meters across), and do so fast enough that I'd go through / past / around more than one in a second, or several. You can't think and react that fast. I would use tricks to drop conscious perception of the actions back when I snowboarded, like singing in my head, but eventually you can just go there mentally, and drop out layers of mental participation.
Maybe rock climbing is a better example. Your mind can be a bit scattered and you can still snowboard in unusual ways, but there's something compelling about hanging on a rock face by fingertips and the edge of an oddly designed shoe. You can stay at that edge, at the limit of what you can do, but overthinking it any at all won't work.
Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades and I wonder what all that was about myself. I can't imagine this would be reassuring to anyone else but somehow I'm sure that we've nothing to worry about, related to death, and to life too. I'm somehow certain that we connect and it all "makes sense" on a level we'll never be able to experience. It's nothing at all about making sense, about reasoning, or about us, in any remotely conventional sense. I had the impression that an experienced self is more about mental habits, assumptions, and preferences than any underlying part of what we really are, that a conventional form of self-experience is just really about the noise part.
Maybe rock climbing is a better example. Your mind can be a bit scattered and you can still snowboard in unusual ways, but there's something compelling about hanging on a rock face by fingertips and the edge of an oddly designed shoe. You can stay at that edge, at the limit of what you can do, but overthinking it any at all won't work.
Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades and I wonder what all that was about myself. I can't imagine this would be reassuring to anyone else but somehow I'm sure that we've nothing to worry about, related to death, and to life too. I'm somehow certain that we connect and it all "makes sense" on a level we'll never be able to experience. It's nothing at all about making sense, about reasoning, or about us, in any remotely conventional sense. I had the impression that an experienced self is more about mental habits, assumptions, and preferences than any underlying part of what we really are, that a conventional form of self-experience is just really about the noise part.
Later thoughts and tangents:
There are lots of directions I might take further thoughts in. It seems there should be a better way to place that experience, and the changes in perspective that resulted from it. There are differing conventional descriptions of odd forms of experience, but it would be problematic to match it to one.
Certainly 25 years later I've changed perspective related to what it meant, and how I view my ordinary life. I've finally got back to meditation again, a practice I only revisited once in between during a two-month stint as a Buddhist monk. During the pandemic I was able to meditate regularly for a month or two, related to gaining some time and energy due to my daily commute dropping out. I've even been considering a connection between running focus and meditation, since for both you are at opposite extremes of the experience spectrum, dropping out all physical and most mental activity, or else engaging your body in repetitive, familiar physical activity. Not much of all of it completely links together, or really informs what that experience was about, or what it may have meant.
To me it seems like I'm a normal person; maybe that doesn't come across in this. If anything I seem much more normal than the average person.
I can't pass on much for advice or summary related to any of this, but I do want to make one last point. In reading up on different forms of meditation experience the idea came up of people having unusual experiences tied to drugs (as I did), and being "reborn under the sway." Anyone going through something like this should seriously consider parting with any negative habits right at that point, any attachments that seem questionable or problematic at all.
It's too long a story to relate to how that played out in my case, but cutting that cycle short right then would've been better. Instead I did a longer version, and dropping out some normal attachments and retaining one primary and somewhat negative one didn't go well. I'm not saying that marijuana is bad, but if you experience a reset of some sort letting such a habit go then would probably be for the best. I guess the same could be true for a move; eventually I parted ways with that habit related to making other conventional changes, including that one.
