Meditation has me confused

[Jo96]

When I began meditating it was very clear the goal I was seeking. I was seeking truth. I wanted to let go of all the noise in my head, the noise from my brain and thoughts and the noise from other people. 

Within a month I had an experience of emptiness. I felt as if my whole body reassembled flowing water or what I would describe as dream stuff. The sensation was pure emptiness and as I watched my actions throughout the day it was as if I was faced with a choice. I could give in to whatever response had been planned no matter how much it made sense or I could simply let it go. As I went deeper and deeper into letting things go I felt my whole being disintegrating. I felt such a fear grip me that I had not felt in my entire life. I felt as if all the theory I was learning might be true and it terrified me. If there is no me? If all I am is a belief ? Who would I be ? 
 

this experience was again revisited after an 8 day retreat where my body head and chest lost all feeling in it. It felt as if every story I told myself was caving in on itself. I remember calling my girlfriend in a panic and asking her to please start an argument with me so that I could take a definitive stance and in so continue to live the lie that I was living. It worked and I returned to my body, but not for long. The following week I felt such fear/ bliss and pure love for reality. I was afraid of what I was becoming Or unbecoming and I was also in love with and grateful to be here. To have people here to counter me, to disappoint me to give me conflict because it all served a higher purpose to keep my ego in place. I remember looking up at the moon the following week and seeing pure love in the sky.  It was so beautiful I can’t even explain it. But I was afraid of leaving so I slowly came back to normal life with only the slight after glow of a dream like feeling in my head that still continues to this day. And every now and then if I focus I can still feel my body dissipate like smoke if I focus hard. 
 

After these experiences I decided to put it into practice. I decided to dedicate some of the day to let things go or to meditate. What’s funny is as I go deeper into letting things go I realize the ridiculous nature of that. The act itself of letting things go is doing? How can I choose to let go? Is that not not letting go? The deeper I dive into meditations the more unclear everything seems. Ultimately what I’m saying may be misunderstood because I’m not even sure I totally understand it but all I’ve learned from Leo and other teachers it’s all ultimately words. If I dive deep into them they break down just like my body does. Nothing can really be held onto. I say this with uncertainty. So please correct me if I’m wrong. Just sharing 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Jo96

[silene]

You've come a long way in a short time friend, I can see your need to integrate your deep insights into everyday life beyond the meditation cushion. 

"The act itself of letting things go is doing? "

I don't have a good answer yet, I've been kicking around similar questions on the forum and in my journal. How to reconcile individual will/ego with the river of life. Keep going, I have faith the answers are to be seen with deeper insights. Have patience, life is good, God will reveal her Truths when the time is right. Look after yourself and your loved ones, take care. 

Edited April 7, 2020 by silene

[Jo96]

8 hours ago, silene said:

You've come a long way in a short time friend, I can see your need to integrate your deep insights into everyday life beyond the meditation cushion. 

 

I’m not certain I get what you mean? 

[Surfingthewave]

@Jo96 You're exactly where your meant to be. You're shedding layers and layers of yourself which is what is leading you to bliss. 

What I would say as someonewho has meditated for a while, be aware of having a goal in meditation. You sound like you're mixing up self inquiry with meditation. 

When we meditate, we come home to who we really are. 

When we self inquire we explore who we really are. 

Good luck ? 

[silene]

2 hours ago, Jo96 said:

I’m not certain I get what you mean? 

Just that you seem to have been meditating for only a few months (if I've understood it correctly), and you have had some deep experiences of emptiness which are frightening and blissful in turns. Integrating it as in having a context for the mystical awareness, to feel ok with being nothingness and having an identity for normal life purposes

"I remember calling my girlfriend in a panic and asking her to please start an argument with me so that I could take a definitive stance and in so continue to live the lie that I was living."

you've had a taste of bliss and emptiness and you are now working on integrating this with your regular relationships in life, which can carry on with a deeper love rather than fear and panic. You're doing nothing wrong. Although there's nothing to hold onto because there's no separate self to do the holding, and everything is in flux, yet life is infinitely creative and provides new patterns to flow with, even as the old ones dissolve away. 

Sorry if I sound a bit vague and woolly, are you looking for something more practical or a reassurance that all's well and you're on the right path? 

Edited April 7, 2020 by silene

[Jo96]

8 hours ago, silene said:

Just that you seem to have been meditating for only a few months (if I've understood it correctly), and you have had some deep experiences of emptiness which are frightening and blissful in turns. Integrating it as in having a context for the mystical awareness, to feel ok with being nothingness and having an identity for normal life purposes

"I remember calling my girlfriend in a panic and asking her to please start an argument with me so that I could take a definitive stance and in so continue to live the lie that I was living."

you've had a taste of bliss and emptiness and you are now working on integrating this with your regular relationships in life, which can carry on with a deeper love rather than fear and panic. You're doing nothing wrong. Although there's nothing to hold onto because there's no separate self to do the holding, and everything is in flux, yet life is infinitely creative and provides new patterns to flow with, even as the old ones dissolve away. 

Sorry if I sound a bit vague and woolly, are you looking for something more practical or a reassurance that all's well and you're on the right path? 

I guess I was mostly confused about the action or word integrate. How can I do this if I’m maybe even not the one doing anything? I’m not sure the difference between doing and letting go. So the word or action of integrate currently doesn’t make sense? How can I do that? If I let go I’m doing. If I don’t I’m being. Seems to me things just fall in place and I don’t have much control 

[Nahm]

On 4/7/2020 at 3:38 AM, Jo96 said:

it’s all ultimately words.

Yes indeed. Words & thoughts appear via duality, twoness, opposites. The smoke & mirrors of it, if you will. 

6 hours ago, Jo96 said:

So the word or action of integrate currently doesn’t make sense? How can I do that? If I let go I’m doing. If I don’t I’m being. Seems to me things just fall in place and I don’t have much control 

‘You’ got it. Integration can be a subtle perpetuating of conditioning that you’re the person rather than the entirety of the experience. (And even that is saying to much) Even the word transcend can be used in sneakery if misunderstood to be a ‘forward movement’, or a relative ‘attaining’, rather than a letting go of conditions. Truth is so good, we just let conditions & limiting beliefs go, and truth naturally is and is more & more realized, felt, ‘lived’, by & in & of itself. There’s no actual duality of doing & being, only an implication via the thought. The light on the wall is entirely free and spontaneous, and is not separate of the flashlight. “Control” can be “used” as a duality too, but is just words, like you said, lol. 

On 4/7/2020 at 3:38 AM, Jo96 said:

I felt my whole being disintegrating. I felt such a fear grip me that I had not felt in my entire life. I felt as if all the theory I was learning might be true and it terrified me. If there is no me? If all I am is a belief ? Who would I be ? 

This is a tricky one. It’s sneaky because we think there is fear, we believe that it exists. We create the idea of it quite innocently, in forgetting our true nature, to “make sense of things”. Then we believe fear, is a feeling. Fear is thought in discord with truth, not a feeling. There is one source of feeling, not-two. There is one source existing, not-two. The key is to consider that fear is no secondary thing at all even, and it did not & can not “grip you”. What you experienced is the conditions you created, that you’ve been holding, that you were still holding in that experience.

If you were to travel to the sun with conditions, and the sun was unconditional, the closer in proximity you got to the sun, the more you’d be aware of the conditions. If you assign those conditions, how they feel to be more precise, to the sun, or to theory, or to anything other than the realization of you’re own holding of the conditions you created, they’ll not burn away. It is we which “grips” it. The sun is not terrifying, it is innocent & pure, realizing, accepting & understanding one has obstructed one’s own light, is just hard to see and acknowledge at first. It’s a complete inversion of experience. You’re doing incredibly well, no rush. 

One of the greatest things about love, is that it doesn’t ‘work’ like everything in experience. The more you give away, the more is experienced. Such is the relationship of desire and love. “Things”, experiences, visions, dreams, hopes...these are permission slips, trivialities, just so that we may experience the reality of the sun, just to revel in it’s shine. This is simply to be yourself. 

“And every now and then if I focus I can still feel my body dissipate like smoke if I focus hard.”

Likewise, there’s a great insight to be mined there. Focus is not of the physical, it’s not a doing. “You” is inseparable of what focus is. Sometimes it seems all the world suffers in a misunderstanding of this. Trying to get the brain to do in a harsh manor, what only the alignment of thought & feeling can & is already naturally doing. Maybe we don’t need more therapy, more pills, more strategies, just less conditions, more acceptance of the perfection in variety. 

[silene]

7 hours ago, Jo96 said:

I guess I was mostly confused about the action or word integrate. How can I do this if I’m maybe even not the one doing anything? I’m not sure the difference between doing and letting go. So the word or action of integrate currently doesn’t make sense? How can I do that? If I let go I’m doing. If I don’t I’m being. Seems to me things just fall in place and I don’t have much control 

Nahm's reply says it better than me, and more besides, but I'm thinking that when we have a glimpse of mystical awareness, there's a temptation to make comparisons with 'regular' life, and generate dualities. Doing vs being, grasping vs letting go, emptiness vs fullness, spirituality vs materialism, that type of thing. Integration in this sense can mean finding a wholeness so that life doesn't start to feel split or compartmentalised by these dualities. I guess there's a cycle of integration and disintegration, coming together and falling apart - Leo has a video on Division vs Unity, have you seen that?