Hi Jillatay,
I don't mind talking about it. I can tell you "my story." My previous experience with meditation was fantastic. I regard it as the pivotal event of my life. I experienced a copernican revolution in my consciousness.
But I don't think I was ready for it.
My analysis of what happened with it is that, combined with the destruction of my family when I was 8 yoa, and the resulting distortion of my personality and socialization process, it took me about 30 years and a few hard knocks to become somewhat normal again.
![[:)]](http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/Smileys/akyhne/icon_smile.gif "Smile")
I think that it has been a kind of purification and that I have spent the last 30 years playing catch up. Still some catching up to do.
I think I have a pretty good handle on things now. At least a better one. I was lucky to have two great mentors in my life, my yoga teacher and my chiropractic teacher. They were both like fathers to me.
I don't know where I would be without their kindness, generosity, influence and guidance.
Reading Yogani's book on Self Inquiry is confirming some conclusions I have made about life and clarifying some aspects that are still a bit muddy. But I ran into some of the pitfalls that Yogani talks about in his book.
An essential confusion for me has been the reconciliation of different teachings regarding the nature of myself. You have the the ego is not you and is bad and should be weakened crowd like Tolle and Krishnamurti and then the ego is you and is good and should be strengthened crowd represented by Ramacharaka and Y and H.
Based on my own experience and upon alot of reading, thinking and observing, I go with the ego is you and is good crowd for now. I am certainly not the lsat word on the subject. My own direct experience with meditation was an incredible strengthening of myself in a very good way.
I experienced myself as a little star, a sun, a nucleus of concentrated spiritual energy and awareness, independent of and separate from everything. I was completely I.
In reading Yogani's book, I see that I was engaging in Self Inquiry in the way he recommends at the time with good effect. But then I read all of Krishnamurti's books. And that gave me some spiritual indigestion. It confused me because the message I took away from him is that I was bad and should be gotten rid of.
This was not a good move on my part because I don't think that I had the necessary personality development at the time to critically analyze it and keep it in perspective. And I think my self inquiry became non-relational to use Yogani's term.
I became more introverted, less social and less assertive. I became disengaged. I was going thru the motions. Life developed a kind of unreality to me even tho I was functional.
Now I know that life is very real (that might seem kind of weird) and this should only occur 2x per day for a short period of time.
To me, Tolle and Krishnamurti teach essentially the same thing but Tolle is nicer and less critical (not blaming them for anything).
There is no place for self image and self esteem in their teaching. It is undesirable or unspiritual.
Tony Robbins puts it nicely when he says you have the "I am" crowd versus the "I can" crowd.
Which to me simply means the ego or witness in its static and dynamic phases.
The funny thing is that the teachers of the ego is undesirable and not you crowd often have very strong egos.
In meditation 30 years ago, I experienced an incredible strengthening of myself. I went from a dispersed and distracted state to an extremely concentrated and focused state with unbroken presense.
In the sky of my mind, I was the sun.
Thoughts were simply objects in a 6th sensory field and I was similtaneously aware of the other 5 as well.
They were thoughts about the past and future and nothing more. They had no reality other than that. There was only now. Unbroken presense.
Juxtaposing the ego, witness or spirit part of myself with the "John Smith" part of myself has been on the front burner, more or less for a while. Presently, I see no difference between the two. They are just two different states of the same the same thing, me, now.
So I am not too concerned about it any more. My sense of presense is there, more or less, regardless.
That is the essential thing. Meditation and being fully engaged in life on all levels.
But now, I am 40 pages or so thru Yogani's book and I am sure that that it will continue to increase my understanding of things.
That is a kind of summary of the last 30 or so years since the big bang.
Best, yb.
