[DonMember]

I just wanted to thank Raza for the time and patience it took to write the above. As a person who has gone through this twice, I can totally agree with the recommendations. “There’s no substance to it, no deeper truth behind the verbal thoughts – it’s all made up on the spot, depending on your beliefs, emotions, and creativity,” is something I just was telling myself this morning. The concepts of self/no-self, like Raza, sent me in directions that were unskillful. I am presently convinced that my understanding of emptiness is much more skillful and beneficial.

I would also like to encourage Vasil. My meditation practice is better and stronger than ever, introspective awareness is much more natural allowing my mind to recognize the story it just loves to make up, confirm its own validity and then getting itself disorientated. Hopefully, after some time it will get better, cause it can.

May you find Peace

[DonMember]

The Dark Night experience is something I have had the misfortune of experiencing once, and possibly twice. I thought is might be helpful to others to share my experience, so here goes:

I had been meditating for a long time without direction. About 13 years ago, I found the podcasts of Gil Fronsdal and Ajaan Thanisarro helpful. But it seemed to improve my mediation experience I should attend a retreat. I took the opportunity to attend a 10 day at a Goenka center. The first 3 days were excellent, I was for the first time able to keep concentration at my nostrils consistently. However, on the fourth day and we were sitting for a longer period and we were told we could not move, I became a bit anxious that I would not be able to do that, but I persisted in sitting. My mind fatigued, became unconcentrated and I drifted into a repressed sub mind I was well aware of, but I did not repress because I was on a retreat. I envisioned hanging myself in a forest, and died. As you can imagine this was powerful and I had no strategy to address this – I had my first panic attack. This started a period of weeks struggling to stay sane. I learned the veil between “sanity and not sanity” is indeed a veil. And I required professional help, it took about six months to recover. I did not want to stop meditation, but it seemed doing it only alone was not healthy. I was fortunate to find a local Sangha, who happened to be studying the TMI book. I found it very helpful, but when Culadasa talked in the book about a dark night, I knew he was authentic.

I was able to progress to stage 4,5, maybe 6 on different occasions. Had some nice Janna experiences, I thought it was all going very well. I started having insights and unique sensory perceptions – like seeing sound, which was a bit scary. But I felt things were going great, I was doing a daily practice, at least 75 min daily in and AM and PM practice. But also at this time work became extremely stressful. One of my colleagues was on medical leave and I had to move an office while performing both his job responsibilities as well as my own. Bottom line, meditation seemed to actually increase the stress at the point I was and boom – panic attacks. I cannot say the cause was where I was in meditation or completely the work stress, likely a combination. However, the extreme feeling of meaninglessness of life, of disorientation as Culadasa talks about in the above link. No self was a part of it, but not much. I felt like the traitor in The Matrix yearning to be reimplanted so I could enjoy the illusion of living normally. I can assure you it is a terrible place to be. This time I knew to seek professional help ASAP. I am ok now. I am starting to meditate again for longer periods, I never stopped this time around.

I hope sharing this experience is helpful to someone. It may be I will never get past stage 5, but meditation has made me a more skillful person. Peace to you all.

[Author]

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