Mysgubbe wrote: ↑Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:19 pm
Hello Dhamma Wheel.
I come with my first post here asking for advice regarding my meditation practice.
When i first started meditating seriously i found that after a while when intense dullness sets in
and i am falling in and out of the hypnagogic state, i would by my best guess catch? my awareness in an instant and experience intense bright yellow light followed by really intense heart rate increase, shivers and hyper awareness, like waking up to a cold shower or something alike.
Continuing my practice i found it a tiny bit easier to enter this state with a bit of willed effort in the right moment. I get the same experience, but it varies in strength and duration.
Having studied alot of meditation books and various advice, i would guess that i should not get to attached to this experience and continue to be just mindful and focused on the breath.
But at the same time it feels like i am cultivating/training something which i cant grasp fully yet.
I am grateful for any input
I apologize in advance but I'm mostly ignoring other comments on this thread.
I have two pieces of information that may be helpful:
1) I often find that trying to restrict awareness to a point-like object often leads to drowsiness in certain meditators. I like to make the entire breath-body the object of meditation, but I've heard of others having success using the area around the navel, the throat, the base of the skull, the center of the skull, the chest, the entire torso, etc. In short, larger object = more awareness = less drowsiness, as a rule of thumb.
Keep in mind, what works for me or others may not work for you, and it will likely require experimentation and/or the advice of a good teacher.
2) Posture has a pretty big effect on the outcome as well. I posted elsewhere on here about posture, and I'll have to find it, but someone said to me to try and find a posture which takes as little effort as possible to maintain as erect as possible of a posture. I use a zafu or a seiza bench most often and if I'm careful, I can find a good posture which takes virtually no effort to remain upright, with the spine straight like an arrow. That's pretty important because not only does it make it so adjusting the posture doesn't become a distraction, but also that the uprightness opens up the wind channels in the body and tends to energize it. In short, better posture = open wind/breath channels = more wakefulness = more pleasant and calm yet wakeful meditation.
Also, I might stir some controversy by saying this, but attachment to the pleasure of meditation (piti-sukha) undercuts attachment to sense pleasure (kama raga). This is not to say you should chase after a certain experience, but, it might do good to allow yourself to enjoy meditation. Seeing signs, lights, visions, etc. are all impermanent and unsatisfactory, but using meditation to wean yourself off of attachment to pleasure in general is indeed the point and purpose of meditating in the first place, as I understand it. Learning how to recognize and recreate the conditions for a good meditation session are key here and that's mostly going to be in the form of letting go, relaxing, and guarding the senses rather than going after a particular experience.
Hope this helps
(P.S. one more thing here, I recall a sutta in which the Buddha stated that the proximal cause of drowsiness is over eating, so watching what and how much one eats is pretty useful too)
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