Please forgive my ignorance about the matters I am about to describe, my level of knowledge is still in its infancy and I am very aware of the fact that I could do with some guidance from some more experienced practitioners - thus the reason I am here...
I recently undertook my first 10 day Vipassana course, from which I have gained more than I could have hope for but also unravelled a huge amount of unanswered questions given the shear intensity of my experience and the inability to really discuss with the teacher or anyone else after finishing the course. I also spoke to a number of other students at the end of the course and garnered that the level of intensity I experienced was seemingly an order of magnitude higher than the others - for whatever reason that may be.
In order to explain my experience and the questions I have I believe I need to describe the build up of my course experience to where I have got to now (about two months since the course ended):
Day 1 and 2 - I struggled with sleep; found it very hard to concentrate doing Anapana and adapt to the new routine of the course. I assume this is no different than any other new student...
Day 3 - During Anapana in the morning I began to experience the feeling of light facial distortions; pressure in the forehead above the nose and some vibrations around the nose & mouth. I asked the teacher about this he told me it was a good sign and to continue. That afternoon whilst doing anapana the vibrations spread throughout my entire body and I experienced what I can only describe as a completely overwhelming feeling of total bliss, love & compassion for around 45mins. I will admit that I was not equanimous throughout this experience - at this point equanimity hadn't yet been taught - and I found that I could expand the vibrations further and further throughout my body by maintaining a certain pressure against my soft pallet area whilst exhaling slowly through my nostrils. I was fairly mind blown by this experience and it made me really understand for the first time the shear healing power of these meditation techniques.
Day 5 - whilst practicing Vipassana and body scanning I had begun exploring internally and found I could slow my heart rate down voluntarily to unfathomably slow rates and enter into what I perceived to be a sort of state of hibernation. By the evening I was able to go extremely deep and feel blood flow dissolve throughout my body right down into my little toes the left slightly before the right. During the evening meditations I had incredibly clear flow states and was able to feel a seemingly incredible level of detail both on the surface and within my body including blood flow dissolving into organs etcetera. Feeling extremely calm, I had expected to go to bed and sleep super well but almost as soon as my head hit the pillow I began getting heart arrhythmias and chest pains. I had similar sort of symptoms 16 years before when I was 21 and over the course of two years was diagnosed with fibromyalgia of my heart tissue. That went away when I was ~24 and I haven't really had it ever since, but suddenly it had seemingly come back. I spent the entire night on the verge of waking up the course manager to go to hospital but refrained and finally slept right around the time the gong went off and had to miss the initial morning session. At lunch on Day 6 I asked the teacher about the unpleasant heart feelings and he explained that it was probably fairly normal (particularly given my history of the problem) and that I was probably beginning to experience the after affects of the release of some deep Sankharas and that this was likely affecting my body in some unusual ways afterwards. He also suggested a Chinese acupressure point on my wrist to help calm my heart down and throughout the rest of the course I found this extremely helpful if I experienced anymore unusual/unpleasant heart sensations/ arrhythmias - using the acupressure point he suggested seemed to make the feelings dissipate within a few minutes every time I needed it.
Day 6 and 7 were spent exploring the depth of Vipassana further and I experienced 2 or 3 long sittings where the pain culminated in white light and the experience changed into something completely different with the pain dissipating into feelings hard to describe. Through days 5, 6 and 7 I had intense visuals akin to strong psychedelic experience - visuals often returning to similar themes, which after speaking to the teacher I tried hard to stay equanimous and not interpret in any way (the final 3 days of the course most of these visuals had ended). By day 7 I had an almost continual pressure behind my nose and forehead and down into my jawline. I found that the area around the nose and forehead could help the interoception/ proprioception of soft tissues throughout my body with my heart acting as a sort of echo locator and sensors in my nose/ forehead picking up the signal. Likewise my jawline would pick up the same but from hard tissues like bone and sternum etc... Even in-between meditations these feelings would only soften but not dissipate completely and I found that when I pressed/pinched soft tissue somewhere the pressure in my hose/ forehead area would increase instantly and likewise if I pressed somewhere like my sternum for example a intense feeling of pressure would light up under my top teeth. These feelings became stronger and stronger and I was almost continually feeling distortions/ twitching/ movement in my face even between meditations and lying in bed at night.
By Day 8 I had lost the ability to sense any body sensations below my head. The feelings in my head were simply too strong and too distracting to allow my senses to perceive anything lower down and all of the flow I had had earlier on in the course had gone. I was continually feeling very intense facial distortions. I asked the teacher about this over lunch and he told me to stay equanimous and stay with the feelings. In the first session after lunch I sat through an hour of very very intense facial distortions; feelings of someone/ an energy walking down stone steps within my face; writing letters inside my skull; teeth twisting in their sockets; my jaw being pulled to one side as far as it will possibly go etc... many very unpleasant gross sensations. After Goenka Ji's chanting had ended I continued and the session culminated in an energy pulling my head right back so I essentially had my chin pointing at the ceiling for 20 minutes with the facial distortions continuing throughout. Finally this was broken by thunder & lightening right over the meditation centre and the sound of children in the nearby kindergarden shouting, screaming and laughing at the noise. I found this pretty funny given the circumstance and my laughing released the energy holding my neck and as my head came forward my amusement turned instantly into the most intense outpouring of grief I have ever experienced in my entire life. I was literally heaving collapsed forward with my head on the floor for 20mins sobbing uncontrollably for no consciously known reason. Finally this subsided, I slowly came back to my senses and as I left the Dhamma hall I felt a huge sense of release (and also confusion).
The final two days of the course remained to be very intense and I continued to have multiple meditations with very intense facial distortions culminating in my head being pulled back by this unknown energy for long periods of time (though no more outpourings of grief). At this point I still didn't really know whether the facial distortions were in my head or real. That was until the course director came into the hall after one session had ended to find me on my own with my head back and face and neck distorted extremely intensely. He had also seen my incident the day before and upon witnessing this suggested I should speak to the teacher about my experiences that evening. The teacher suggested I should take it easy and if things got too intense I should open my eyes and not push it too hard for fear of potentially causing some psychological damage since I was maybe too inexperienced to be going through such intense experiences so early in my Vipassana education.
Since the end of the course I have been trying to continue my practice twice daily with varying degrees of success. The intensity from the course remained for the first 7-10 days but since then it has dissipated a lot and I have unfortunately missed too many sessions from work or social interruptions. I have recently had two very intense experiences of floating outside my body and my "I" somehow pulling further and further away from where I was sat, which sounds like entering the 5th Jhana from what I have briefly read (though I might be very wrong). Aside from that, the pressure behind my nose, forehead and jaw is totally gone and I now find it very hard to get into any sort of flow state or depth whist sensing the body. I am still getting some very intense facial distortions from time to time simply when doing anapana.
This is now an extremely long post, but from these experiences mentioned above I have many unanswered questions, which I am hoping this community might be able to help with. I have done quite a lot of research online about these sorts of experiences but I really haven't found much that sounds very similar. So:
1) Can anyone suggest what I might be going through? Are these intense physical experiences likely the release of deep Sankharas from my life or past lives?
2) Is it possible that the predominantly gross sensations will give way to something else. I assume by the very nature of impermanence this should be true.
3) Can anyone recommend any further reading I can do that will help me understand these matters further?
4) What is the limit to being equanimous (i.e. at what point should I know when to stop?) ? I am probably a fairly stubborn inquisitive person and the combination of the two has led me to push myself fairly hard through the pain and gross sensations. Is this the right thing to being doing? Is pushing hard even staying equanimous to begin with. It seems a contradiction-in-terms almost.
5) I have signed up for a second course in January and am waiting to be accepted at the moment. I find myself craving to get back to the level of intensity that had at the end of the first course and from then try to maintain the cadence strictly with twice daily practice (so as to continue getting the benefits I gained from Course 1, which I find have now slipped somewhat). Again, this craving in itself is of-course breaking equanimity and seems like a Catch-22 situation. How to not crave for improving your vipassana? Haha..
6) What are these recent out of body experiences I have had?
This is definitely enough for now and if anyone has read this far I would be amazed. Any advice though would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
Topic: Advice Please: Extremely intense Sankhara release? (Read 854 times)
January 17, 2009, 07:17:51 AM