[Kurt SMember]

I’m not a mediatation teacher, this is just from my own personal experience.

There are two things to talk about here regarding the perception of light.

The first is this. If you pay attention to the event of coming in and out of strong dullness, you’ll notice that when you come out of strong dullness there is a brightening affect on the other side of your eyelids as more of the light from the room comes into perception. Likewise, when you become dull that perception of light fades. This dimming can be difficult to notice when you are being lulled into dullness. The resolution to pay attention to the perception of light in your awareness will allow you to notice when you are becoming dull and resolve it before it is too late. The resolution alone can even be enough to help you remain alert.

The second is that there are ways to create mental objects during meditation, such as the perception of light AND during certain stages of meditation bright light can also occur without creating the intention for it. I think that it’s good to be mindful of the things in this paragraph, but the information in the paragraph above is more useful when dealing directly with dullness.

I hope that makes sense.

Kurt

[Kurt SMember]

Chris,

This could be a really long response, but I’m going to try and keep it as short as possible to just get to the point. Full disclosure, I’m not a meditation teacher. Please take this as friendly advice.

It sounds to me like you would be well-served devoting additional time to metta practice. If your goal is to improve your emotional range, working with metta will help you. I mentioned in my post above that it may not happen right away. Just like any type of exercise, it takes directed effort on the area you want to improve to make progress.

With metta specifically, it may be important to set two specific goals for yourself. 1) Have faith that the practice works. Not just for some people, but that it will work for you too. Give metta the benefit-of-the-doubt. 2) Put your focus on the practice and not the results. It’s OKAY to engage in loving-kindness meditation and not feel anything. The simple act of devoting pure intention to yourself and others is enough. Consider the loving intentions of metta as you would a seed. Tend to the seed without worrying how or when it will grow. Just keep to the practice with some amount of faith. Then you can look back 3 months, 6 months, 1 year from now and it will be much easier to measure your progress.

[Kurt SMember]

Chris,

I’d highly suggest reading the appendix section on Loving-Kindness meditation in Culadasa’s book. This form of meditation works directly with creating positive emotional states. It’s a very powerful and often-overlooked practice. You may not see results right away, but you will over time. The key to this form of meditation is holding a sincere desire to spread loving-kindness. The pure intent and the emotion it generates becomes the meditation object itself. With time and practice, these positive emotional states should become more accessible to you.

[Kurt SMember]

I’d also recommend to not really read too much into your experiences and sensations during meditation. There is a strong desire to search for deeper meaning, to find patterns that we can read into, etc. Simply meditate and let whatever happens, happen.

[Kurt SMember]

Hi moln1,

I’m not a teacher, but maybe some of what I have to say will be helpful. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book so my terminology may not match up exactly with what’s in there.

Two things immediately come to mind regarding your comments about not committing anything to memory. The first is that you may be experiencing dullness which is leading to the forgetfulness. The book has a lot of useful advice for getting through dullness, but also it’s something that in my experience takes time and practice to overcome.

The second thing that comes to mind is the difference between focus and awareness (these may not be the exact words in the book). In my experience, the more narrow your attention is focused the more limited your awareness becomes, and the more you open your awareness the less focused your attention is. There have been times where I couldn’t tell if I was experiencing an inhale or an exhale due to the level of focus on individual vibrations of air through my nostrils.

However, to me that seems a bit different than not remembering things so I’m more inclined to think that dullness is a factor here.

As far as your original question regarding whether its okay to contemplate the nature of self, many people find exercises like that useful. Sometimes in my experience, like you mentioned, it seems to give a burst of concentration which can help with dullness.

There’s an old koan in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind that goes:

Zuikan was a Zen master who always used to address himself. “Zuikan? ” he would call. And then he would answer. “Yes! ” “Zuikan? ” “Yes! ” Of course he was living all alone in his small zendo, and of course he knew who he was, but sometimes he lost himself. And whenever he lost himself, he would address himself, “Zuikan? ” “Yes! ”

Hopefully some of this is useful to you.

[Kurt SMember]

I’m interested to hear more about the physical tension you are feeling around the face/eyes. If the tightness in that area is because you are tensing your muscles as you focus, then it’s as simple as consciously relaxing that area as much as possible. Tension in any area isn’t strictly necessary for meditation. You want to be relaxed and alert at the same time.

However, feelings of muscle tension like you describe can happen involuntarily for some people. In my case, when I started meditating I started experiencing strong energy movements. The area around my forehead and eyes was particularly sensitive to the energy and I’d experience muscle contractions around my cheeks and eyes, as well as an all around feeling of tightness in my head. The sensations of energy became so strong that it was very difficult to feel my breath at the nostrils because there was so much interference.

If the second case sounds more similar to what you are experiencing, then something that helped me was to shift my focus object from the breath at the nose, to the breath throughout the body. I found that whole body breathing dispersed the energy more evenly throughout my body and it was much more manageable. Eventually, my body adapted to living with increased chi/energy/kundalini (whatever you want to call it) and now I can focus on the nostrils without as much interference.

Hopefully that all makes sense for you.

[Kurt SMember]

It seems like you already have an intuitive sense of how you should be approaching things. I think it’s worthwhile to listen to that intuition and not worry too much about the words in the book. The book is excellent, I bought the electronic and print versions of it. I love the book and I recommend it to everyone.

The Mind Illuminated is a really detailed book and an amazing resource. I really think it’s a treasure of information about meditation, and the teachers here know far more than I do about the ins and outs of meditation, and the methods outlined in the book.

However, it’s just a book and your individual path to awakening is going to be yours alone. So, try not to worry too much about the details of the book. If you pay attention to what happens during meditation, truly pay attention, I believe you’ll be on the right path.

[Kurt SMember]

Hopefully Matthew responds to this post himself, and you’ll get a clear answer from the source.

My own thoughts on the subject are that you are probably overthinking terminology. Really, it’s as simple as maintaining your attention on the focus object. If you feel this requires a great deal of effort or tension, relax yourself and try approaching it with a sense of calm attention. Being interested in the breath is helpful because it’s easier to maintain attention on things that we are interested in, thus creating a frame of mind that helps keep feelings of effort and striving at bay. For some people, looking at it that way can be helpful. For other people, maybe it feels contrived.

In the end, all of these words like striving, effort, interest, gentle, passive, calm, etc. are just…. words. The best thing to do is work it out yourself through practice.

Personally when I meditate, I start by sitting down and relaxing my body. Before I focus on my breath i just become aware of my body and the sensations of breathing, I also let my mind calm down. I let thoughts come and go without attaching to them. Then when my mind feels calm and my body feels relaxed, I bring my attention to the breath. Not long after, there is a flow state where it feels much less effort is required to maintain concentration. At this point there isn’t really a sense of effort or doing, but more of letting meditation happen.

I hope that helps and makes sense for you.

• This reply was modified 9 years ago by  Kurt S.

[Kurt SMember]

From what I understand, they are quite common. As for myself, sensations of energy are readily available and I’ve experienced many different flavors so to speak. I’m not sure that there’s any significance to it other than what is said in the book, so I try not to read too much into it. It seems like everyone’s mind/body reacts somewhat differently to meditation.

[Kurt SMember]

I’m glad to hear that you are going to start doing the Mindful Review practice, I’m sure you’ll find it very helpful.

As far as my own practice, specifically with non-relaxing experiences during meditation, I’m not sure how helpful it would be to go into detail about those, other than to say that in the same way that each moment of our lives is a unique experience, each moment of meditation is a unique experience. It’s true that in meditation the mind becomes calm and the body becomes relaxed, but sometimes other things happen too. I don’t feel very qualified to speak to those things with any degree of certainty, this is where one of the teachers on the board would be much more helpful than myself.

Just keep up with your mindful review and sitting meditation, be receptive to whatever happens, and you’ll do great. It sounds like you are heading in the right direction.

[Kurt SMember]

You have two very capable teachers in this thread, so I’m sure whatever they say will be more helpful than what I have to say. However, as someone who also came to meditation to relieve stress and anxiety maybe it will be useful if I share a few more thoughts with you. This advice comes in two parts.

The first part is learning to be in the present moment. Anxiety is usually related to concerns about the future… “What if X happens?”, “What if X doesn’t happen?”. Sometimes the anxiety also dredges up unresolved things in the past to help fuel the fear of the future. Before we know it we are pulled away in those thoughts, we lose ourselves to them. By learning to be in the present moment, you are learning to be with what is, not what was or what may be.

For me, the first big step with this was learning to recognize when I had been pulled away in compulsive thinking. I used breath counting early on to show me when my mind started to slip away from my focus object. If I lost count of what number I should be on, or if I forgot that I was supposed to be counting entirely, it was a signal that I got carried away by my thoughts. Eventually, I learned to recognize negative thought patterns as they occur, and in deeper states of meditation, recognize them before they occur. Eventually counting becomes unnecessary entirely.

Once you can recognize the thoughts before they pull you away on the anxiety ride and take hold of you. The next step is to let the thought pass on. Don’t let it take hold of you, but also don’t push it away either. Just let the the thought happen and let it go. If you are meditating move back to your breathing, if you are at work go back to what you are doing. This process of continually returning to your breathing, guiding your attention back to your focus object, is meditation. Learning to do this is the first step to staying present with what is real, what is actually happening right now.

So that was part one, part two will be shorter I promise 🙂

Part two has to do with the idea that meditation will help you relax and relieve stress. I think a lot of people have this misconception about meditation, they see the pictures of someone smiling with their eyes closed in the lotus position and they think it looks very relaxing. I had the opportunity, unusually early, in my practice to be shown that this assumption was incorrect. Meditation is not always a relaxing experience, and becoming attached to pleasant states, sitting with the purpose of obtaining them can become a trap. Meditation can and will help you work through a lot of things, but it’s going to be work, at times even painful. At least, that’s been the case for me.

I really don’t want to discourage you from sitting though, or even from having goals. Just be okay with whatever happens during meditation and keep up the practice. In Zen they say, “Just sit.” It’s quite profound how much is in those two words, really.

[Kurt SMember]

Praxis,

I can only speak from my personal experience and understanding, and I’m not a teacher, but maybe some of what I have to say could be useful to you.

Setting and following through with goals is a part of our every day human existence. Goals and intentions certainly have their place. With meditation though, setting goals can be a trap or a hinderance. Ivan has mentioned being playful with the goals, and in my mind this is a good way to be laid back about them. You see, the problem with goals is we often become attached to the desired outcome. Should the actual outcome be different than the desired outcome, we often can become sad, frustrated, or experience other emotions. In contrast, when we set a goal and we achieve it, we can also become attached to the outcome we set out for and the positive feelings associated with it.

You may say to yourself, I want to progress to the next stage of Culadasa’s book. My goal is to move from stage 6 to stage 7, or my goal is to to sustain Jhana, or my goal is to become enlightened. You sit, and it seems like you are not achieving your goal. Inevitably, if you are attached to the desired outcome you’ll say to yourself something along the lines of, “I’m not progressing!” and you’ll believe it.

We do this all the time not just in meditation, but in life, we say to ourselves “I just want to be happy”, “I just want to be relaxed”, “I want to be enlightened”, etc. Anytime you say “I want”, you are saying you don’t have it. “I want to progress” is the same as saying “I’m not progressing.” Take away the “want” the “attachment” and you can begin to move forward. Meditation, I’ve found, is less about gaining things and more about removing them. In a lot of ways it’s like peeling the layers of an onion away until nothing is left.

There’s a lot more to say about this, and I’m sure entire books have been written on this single topic alone. The best advice I can give you is the advice I follow myself and that is to let meditation happen, don’t try and DO meditation. The joy you are looking for will come, insight will come, but so will your legs falling asleep, difficult emotions, strange sensations and all sorts of other things. The more you are willing to accept whatever presents itself as it is presented, without attaching anything to it, the more you’ll understand.

I hope that helps.

[Kurt SMember]

I’m not a teacher or expert, so please forgive me if this isn’t helpful.

Being an objective observer, to me, means simply to be with the emotion without labeling it. It is the act of experiencing and observing whatever presents itself without attaching anything to it. Meeting difficult emotions with warmth and acceptance can be useful, but I understand the two to be different. In meditation, instead of trying to experience a difficult emotion with another emotion, such as warmth or acceptance, I try to just experience what is being presented without adding to it.

It’s a difficult concept to try and talk about, so maybe someone more experienced than myself can be of more help.

[Kurt SMember]

I’m neither experienced or knowledgeable, but it seems to me that if meditation has become a chore you should meditate on why this is the case. Sit with the feelings of boredom, frustration… whatever the feelings are and just experience them. Try to disengage from identifying with the feelings and emotions. Treat the feelings like you would the sound of a bird chirping, merely observe them without identifying with them. Simply being able to do this is progress itself.

[Kurt SMember]

Hi Blake!

First of all, let me say a sincere THANKS for taking the time to discuss my questions with Culadasa and the rest of the group. I really appreciate you taking the time you’ve taken to help me.

Thank you for the recommended pages, I’ll definitely read them all ASAP. I also appreciate the advice on being aware of the entire body, and this has also been helping me a great deal.

About the time I picked up this book I started attending a group meditation each week with a Taoist meditation teacher who also teaches Qi Gong. I’ll be taking a Qi Gong class with him starting next month to try and learn to control all of this energy I’m experiencing.

Specifically regarding the advice to be more aware of the full body with the breath, I’ve found that this definitely makes the energy less intense. It’s also very pleasant to feel the sensations in my body expand and contract with the breath. I get to this very warm, radiant place when I do it and the energy is more spread out and subtle. When I focus intently on the breath at the nose, that’s when the energy starts getting really crazy almost instantly sometimes. However, I feel like I’m stuck as to what to do next. Moving my focus away from the nose and onto the energy sensations throughout my entire body gets me to a nice place of relaxation, pleasure, and upliftedness. I can kind of move that awareness of energy around, in front of me, to the top of my head, to the sides, and behind or I can just let it fill my body. But, I’m not sure where to go from there, and I end up in that state for the entirety of my sit.

Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks again!

[Author]

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