My experiences concerning self-pacing

[Alexander]

Hi you meditators,
finally I'm back. Living in Austria my English is not the best, but I want to share some thoughts about self-pacing.

maybe someone remembers me - thekid with tons of bhakti.
14 months ago i entred a state of great darkness. i was afraid of where meditation was leading to.  was afraid of losing myself. i was thinking too much about the enlightened state. it was my goal. i practised and practised (kriya pranayama) up to 3 or 4 hours a day.

finaly i quit meditation and joined life again. i was feeling pretty good. maybe as a result of the purifying of the nervous system.
but still there was this extreme powerful mind - following the guidance of my thoughts i lost myself in the jungle of desires.

after a year i felt the strong desire to start meditating again. being aware of my previous experience i decided to start slowly.

but soon i started exaggerating again. by that time i was feeling inner peace and bliss. i wanted more and more - faster and faster.

for 2 weks i practised nadi sodhana for one hour a day and omkar pranayama for 5-7 hours. as a result i was feeing worse and worse.

now the bad thing happened: instead of applying the knowledge of self-pacing i believed that more practice would solve my problems.
my mind linked the world with my bad feelings. everything was empty and boring. even meditation. but i forced myself to because my mind promised: if you do it, you'll be saved.

my mind started thinking of the enlightened state again and wanted to understan it. it became afraid...as a result i was feeling far away from enlighenment, far awy from joy. afraid of both - meditation and ot meditaing. like in a world between joy and normal life. not able t return to a normal life, not able to reach the new realm of joy.

then i became sick and almost couldn't eat for a week. but i meditated and meditated. the day before yesterday i couldn't meditate much, because i was in the zoo.

i was doing pranayama while driving home. at first i experienced joy and bliss...but then i reached a point, where the energy made me feel like i had to move. moreover my thoughts wanted to analyze enlightenment again.

now i'm tryin to balance my daily practicwe, because right now, without having meditated today i feel intense bliss in my whole body. i feel joy. i'm funny, i'm happy.

on the one hand i love the bliss, but on the other hand my mind starts telin me: you're feeling fine. why do you want to meditate?
then i start thinking: don't be lazy. meditate!

i realized my problem: feeling joy and bliss during my day i fel guilty because i think i don't take my practice serious enough. as a result i start overdoing it again.

So i quit my meditation session, when i start feeling like i have to move.
i quit m session, when my mind starts thinking about enlighenment.
i quit my session, when i start losing the lightness.

i hope that doesn't result in too little meditation.

as you see, self-pacing is somethig i am not good at. ;-)

alex

[Etherfish]

yes; plenty of bhakti.
This might sound non-spiritual, but i think you need to find something in the real world that is as compelling as your practices, and use your struggling tendency to balance the two. Maybe volunteer work or something. Surprisingly, the world of maya can actually accelerate your spiritual development if you concentrate on this balance. It helps to lift up those low points you're experiencing. good luck.

[Black Rebel Radio]

Hi Alexander. I don't think anyone shows up being good at self-pacing. I think you have to go through a few (or maybe may more!)trials before you can learn what your limits are. I think that this sort of suffering is an integral part of the process. This is where you learn how your body and mind communicate and where and what to listen to or feel from. How can you know your limits unless you get close to them (or go past them)?


It is different for every single person. Hang in there. Sounds like you are on the right path.



Mac

[AYPforum]

Moderator note: Topic moved for better placement

[yogani]

Hi Alexander:

Good to see you again after so many months.

I hope you will forgive me for being blunt, but if you can't keep to some sort of reasonable daily schedule in practices, it will be difficult to gain much benefit from yoga. This is especially true of the kinds of practices we discuss here, which are quite powerful and not very forgiving when carelessly taken to excess.

It is not about the ups and downs of our daily experiences, which mean little in the over all scheme of things, except for use in self-pacing practices. It is about long term cultivation of steady and permanent quality of inner life, which translates directly to quality of outer life. Regular measured daily practice over the long term is the key. By the clock, like brushing teeth, bathing, and going to work.

In practices, less will often lead to more, and too much will lead to less. Keep it in mind the next time you are considering doing a powerful yoga practice all day long, especially when you have no foundation in daily practice from which to consider such a thing. I can assure you that no one who is knowledgeable in yoga would consider taking such rash action. So why should you?

Gasoline can be very useful when applied in carefully measured ways. If we dump gasoline all around and set it on fire, will that be useful? Powerful yoga practices are no different. Enlightenment comes from taking thousands of small steps -- a few each day.  

So ... practice wisely each day, looking to keep up a balanced routine for the long term, and enjoy the well-earned results!

The guru is in you.

PS: And that means being responsible with our bhakti too. Bhakti (spiritual desire) is in our interest if it leads us to effective action. If it is taken to excess, it can cause as much difficulty as overdoing in any other practice.

[Alexander]

"I can assure you that no one who is knowledgeable in yoga would consider taking such rash action. So why should you? "

thoughts of being very strong mentally. feelings of being very strong physicaly. in other words: arrogance.

these experiences have scaried me. i am recovering now and i am sure, i will never ever do such unreasonable practice again.

it's extremely strange how subtle my thoughts were changing...everything felt reasonable. that's so weird.
every state of being has its own logic - and i couln't see this. the mind an be dangerous when a person loses the grund beneath the feet.

when i'm recovered i'll write more about this topic - so this experence is not "worthless" and others may benefit.

[yogani]

Hi Alexander:

We have all done it ... or I should say overdone it. It can happen to any of us at any time. That is why we have self-pacing.

Difficult experiences are never worthless, especially if shared so others can benefit -- thank you for that. But they do tend to lose value if we keep repeating them.

As they say, "Live and learn."

All the best!

The guru is in you.

[Alexander]

i stopped my practices 7 days ago - time for a small field report.

4 days ago i started feeling ashamed of myself, because i felt so far away from leading a good life. i felt far away from god (even thinking of the phrase "we all are god" hurt me deeply, because it felt presumptuous to me).

i felt wothless and hopeless.

yesterday i noticed, that i am not able to be restless. after a few seconds i have to change my posture. my legs and arms are restless. if i don't move them, they start to hurt - and energy is building up, which has to be "used" ins ome way.

furthermore i feel an itching all over my body. it changes place very fast. (i don't know if that's an overpurification symptom but i guess so).

alex

[yogani]

Hi Alexander:

Sounds like you are having some delayed effects from overdoing in practices -- too much energy running around, coloring the emotions, causing nervous fidgeting in the body, etc.

It would be good to spend time daily in grounding activity -- physical exercise, doing mundane things that bring you some satisfaction. Hobbies, socializing, etc. Forget about spiritual matters for a while. It is time to back off from the edge.

Don't worry, you will come back to practices. For now, you need to find some balance. That is an important part of the path also.

When you do come back to practices, remember the suggestions that have been offered above about taking small steps each day, and you will be fine.

These are some lessons learned that can serve you well in the future.  

All the best!

The guru is in you.

[anthony574]

Alexander, I feel as I read your posts that you and I have something in common in that we both overanalyze ourselves and everything else and this can lead to feelings of everything being "presumptuous" or a feeling that "only I can understand." I've struggled with this, though I never overdid my practices and I learned that there is tremendous value is toning down your practies to a simple and regular routine and even more so - get out in the world! I assume you are young and the last thing you want to do, unless you are the Budda Boy, is make enlightmenment your center of being. There is a lot that needs to be done in the "real world" at the young ages and you cannot neglect that fact. I recently was struggling with overwhelming urges to throw away my life in favor of this and that and these urges came from somewhere deep within brought out through yoga. It took over a year of this angst to decide "Ok, I don't think more yoga is going to be the answer here. I think I need to take out a loan and go to college". I also began a rigorous exercise routine of weight-lifting and cardio-intensive sports and you would be amazed at how exercise can really level you out for the better and ease your dramatic UP Down Up DOWN emotional routine. Sometimes it can seem like your problems are all coming from within...and perhaps in an existential sense they are, but they cannot all be solved through more yoga. You were given a body, an ego, five wonderful senses, and a personality - use them! They are not there to be obliterated, especially when you're a teenager.

Enlightenment seems to me to be a perfect example of one of those things, like playing the didgeridoo or trying to tread water - the harder you strain the harder it is to attain.

[lover]

 Hello Yogani,

    Thanks for the lessons that you've shared.Honest.
 As one of the seeker,i'm one of the people here who's really inspired
 to really read your every replies for every inquiries of the needy souls like us here.

    As you know, i have practiced AYP deep meditation way back 9 months from now.I applied self-pacing, doing it as what you've instructed in the lessons.it was for 7 months.Then,after that period, I experience physical thinness.My friends even told me that i look like a drug addict.wheww[]

    But before practicing Ayp, I had already done other path - an islamic one..That is,I practiced dhikir moderately but not as regular as in doing Ayp.

    And then after that period of 7 months Ayp,i turned back to my old Islamic spiritual practice and apply your most valuable art of self-pacing which i never encountered before.And then i had observed and some of my friends also,i turned back to look normal again.My face become more reddish to the extent that my friends told me that i'm getting healthier.."Why is this so?"it has been for almost 2 mnths now that i'm in my 'back-to-old' spiritual practice.To tell you clearly, i practice dhikir similar to japa meditation using mala beads. I did it by uttering mantra silently.

    I am sharing you and everyone here coz maybe you can throw some piece of advice..I am also curios that maybe AYP is deeper that my old practice..

    Again, a thousand thanks and hope to read from you soon

[Ananda]

hi Lover[], it's lovely to be in the presence of an islamic mystic.

to be honest with you it's the other way around with me, during my practice of intense prayer and dhikir i was going thin but i noticed the way kundalini works it way going back and forth and so on and the purification effects going to the outside.

i actually used to practice both intense prayer and dhikir and Yoga practices all together until i stumbled upon ayp where you can say starting from that point it's mostly only Yoga practices now including a lot of self enquiry and surrendering to the all mighty and his wish and instead of intense prayer i am melting with the saints and holy figures.

but those periods of intense prayer and fasting do come and go every now and then when the call comes from within and it's usually time to watch out for self pacing when that happens in my case.

and on this new undertaken path i can say that i am definitely gaining weight unlike the case before.

by the way i have some suffi friends who gained weight from being on either end of the practices[] and the strict suffi ones i know of aren't the least slim hehehe[:p] but the yogic friends who do not have an awakened kundalini seem to have neither gained or lost any weight.

from what i've observed it's when kundalini awakens that this kind of stuff starts to happen.

oh and i think that doing a combination of both of the practices would do you some good and will have a sweet taste to it[].

and to be honest with you i don't think anyone can give a direct answer regarding this case of yours or mine bcz each of us is built in a certain way with a different nervous system but the experiences are all the same on the yogic path as well the suffi path and others...

warmest regards to you my brother,

Ananda

[lover]

Thanks Ananda,

You had inspired me[].