abundance

I have always had sudden and rather spontaneous moments of nostalgia. These instances usually occur when I am in a contemplative or insightful mood. However, with my meditation practice I am noticing that they are occuring a lot more frequently, perhaps once or twice a day. The odd thing about these moments of temporary nostalgia is that I can almost never associate with them with a mental image or direct past experience. It is more of an intuition/feeling and not of anything that I can recollect or remember via any of the 5 senses. At times I recognize through intuition that the feelings may be from experiences in my early childhood or from a distant past that cannot be pinpointed. Has anyone had similar experiences and is there a label for this phenomena ?

Describing it as an emotion is a far more concise description. Based on your post it sounds like you have the exact same experiences. For me the emotions/feeling do not always trigger a sense of sadness. There are times when it produces a great euphoria from either an experience in childhood or from a distant past. Or it could be me yearning to reconnect with the source/oneness.

Thanks for your response. I will certainly look him up. The nostalgia has a very real sense of familiarity to it. Looking back I have always had these occurences, even when I was young but was never fully aware of what was going on.

Hello everyone this is my first post on this magnificent forum. I have been meditating on and off since I was 18 (now 27). Only in recent years have I fully grasp the purpose of meditation and taken my practice more seriously. It has always been difficult for me to maintain concentration throughout meditation and in some aspects of my everyday life. Lately I have been incorporating a form of meditation called Trakata ( I didn't even realize it was a form of meditation until I Googled it) . This technique involves gazing at a lit candle in a perfectly dark room. I usually do this technique before bed and gaze at the candle until it completely burns itself out. Along with gazing at the candle I try to focus intently on each and every aspect of the breath. Even though I have gotten positive results from this technique, I am curious to know if there are other techniques that can enhance my concentration. I have been experiencing headaches the last few days which I am pretty certain can be attributed to the technique that I am practicing. It is very difficult on the eyes. Has anyone tried this technique or something similar ? Any suggestions on a alternative?