Difficulty building stable practices

[innercall]

Hi everyone,

I am very sensitive to practices and have difficulties finding balance. I would like to share my situation with you if only to share and maybe to receive some advices.

Just to make a general overview of my situation, I started practising meditation 3 years ago with a similar technique as DM. After about 3 months of practises, I am pretty sure I had a kundalini awakening. I nearly knew nothing about kundalini but I had a lot of good experiences and positive changes in my life in that period. But also, in that period, while meditating, my attention was very often drawn to the top of my head and it gave me pleasurable feelings. The thing is I didn’t know a thing about crown opening and how to safely proceed with it. This initial period of joy, love and pleasurable energy was eventually replaced by fear and sadness. I didn’t knew a thing about self-pacing so since I was not feeling well, I figured out that if I did more I would get better. Of course that was completely wrong and things got worse with intense feelings of sadness and fear in the heart and plexus area. Eventually I decided that maybe the problem was with my meditation technique and then followed a period of about one year of doubts where I tried a couple of meditation techniques that never gave me any good results. Eventually things got better but I was still desperate for spiritual experiences. I decided to come back to my first meditation technique and a couple of months later I found AYP.

It was really the answer to my prayers…. I found responses to so many questions I had and most of all it gave me confidence in the path of spirituality and settled the doubts that haunted me for so long.

I then started meditating according to Yogani’s instructions and I added SBP. I immediately felt that there was something good for me there. I started with 10 minutes of SBP and 20 minutes of DM.  At this period, I think I was used to a certain amount of excess purification and I was not conscious that I needed self pacing. Over the course of the last 11 months, I cut and cut in my practices to try to get stable and comfortable during the day. It helped a lot and I feel much better then when I started but it seemed that no matter how much I cut the practices, I would always feel excesses in energy and uncomfortable feelings during the day.

Now, I have cut the practise time to a ridiculously low level and I still get discomforts.
Since a couple of weeks I have kept practices very low with a small series of asanas and no more than 2 minutes of DM and sometime not more than 3 repetitions of the mantra followed by a 2 minutes of meditation focusing on the breathing instead of the mantra. I then only keep my attention on any discomfort in the body for another 10 minutes.

With about 2-3 repetitions of the mantra, I feel silence but also a lot of energy getting stuck in the front part of my body mostly in the heart and plexus area.

From time to time I try SBP but with only one breathing cycle up and down the spinal nerve I feel excess energy during the day.


The kind of symptoms I feel from time to time are:

- Feeling that my tongue is burned like if I had drunk something too hot.
- Energy stuck somewhere along the front line of my body between throat and pelvic bone.
- Pressure on the right side of my throat. There is a kind of tension going from the inside of my right ear going thru the right side of my tongue and throat, right side of my chest  and then going down to the right side of my pelvis.
- Digestive problems: I sometime feel discomfort after heating in the plexus area like there was too much energy there.

One thing that happens sometime is the feeling of a small tingling sensation at rear part of the top of my head. It is very small and it is the same sensation as when my hairs are touched by something but they aren't. Sometime I also notice this sensation at other parts of the head, on the right side, or in front near the third eye.

I must say that even with these discomforts I feel better than I did one year ago. I have moments of silence, bliss and sometime a little of ecstasy that leave me very tired.

The thing is that I don’t know how to balance my practices to make them stable. I have added a lot of grounding activity since this summer and it helped a lot. I now try to walk at least 30 minutes per day if I don’t have any other physical activity in the day.

On one side, I am desperate to progress and feel very sad to have to always reduce my practice times. I would like get to a stable practice time and I don’t really know how to do it. I think it is maybe related to a premature crown opening but I am not sure.

Should I try to do a little of SBP to try to redirect energy out of the area of the crown? Is it possible that the energy discomfort I feel when I do SBP once in a while could get better if I did it with regularity once each day at my morning sadhana?

As for meditation, should I keep up with a very short duration of DM? It feels like I will really stop making progress if I stop mantra meditation completely and that’s why I want to keep the habit of the mantra for at least a couple of repetitions.

I really want to get stable and to feel that I am progressing with more comfort …Any advices are welcome…

Innercall

[yogani]

Hi Innercall:

There is some research going on behind the scenes that might offer some help for those who are sensitive in deep meditation. I will send you an email with some suggestions. It is still tentative, so I am reluctant to lay it out in public just yet. As soon as we are sure we have something, it will be.

Others who are sensitive in deep meditation, feel free to note it here or drop me a line. We are looking for more testers.

All the best!

The guru is in you.

[brother neil]

I would be interested in it yogani
thanks
brother Neil

[miguel]

Hi innercall.

I know how hard is to be a sensitive meditator when you are hungry of spiritual experiences.

There are some sensitive meditators in ayp,and luckily ayp is a ever expanding system,constant research...
I hope all our problems dissapear soon and well find the joy using new perspectives of practice.

Have a good day.

[innercall]

Hi Miguel,

I agree it is hard to feel limited in our practices when we have this hunger.

Still, I am thankfull for all I have experienced. Without that sensitivity I might not have settled on the spiritual path.

I think that if I see things with a longer perspective, I am sure it is possible to reach a level of practice that will bring stable progess and increasing stillness and joy.

Hope the best for you and all sensitive meditators.

Innercall

[Holy]

Hi innercall,

it was the same for me. I don't know how Yogani found out these mantras, but their effects are immense. The solution for me was awareness-based meditations like:

- staying aware of what is happening inside and outside the body inluding everything (like feelings, thoughts, sounds, visions) at the same time. When you drift off into thoughts, you come back to "being aware of everything at the same time", like the mantra procedure in AYP.

Pros: That one is so far the best working of all. Smooth, fast awareness grow, peace and nondual perception. Easy surrender and let go, fast realization of what you are not. You can meditate as long as you wish without much discomfort but steady awareness grow. You can rest in pure bliss awareness very easy.

(never thought I would rate meditation types =P)

"Cons": It takes time for good results, 20-60 mins. Increased no mind during the daytime can cause problems when the mind is needed (work, school). Fast silence grow can cause depression. Watching the dreams all night long feels strange, no unawareness during nights anymore.
_________________

- being aware of your focus point/your awareness that changes out of itself. other formulation: watching the movement of your focuspoint/awareness. Example: You are aware of the screen, "next moment" you are aware of some itching in the body, then again aware of the screen. Watching/following this kind of "awarenessmovement".

Pros: Even smoother and easier. Surrender happens out of itself. Everything moves out of itself. The routing of the awarenessmovement is very playfull. Goes very deep till no mind, full awareness like the first one. Brings about the same results as the first one. Makes you aware of places you have never been aware of before (tensions in subsubsubmuscles, nerves etc =P). Is like spacetravel.

Cons: Takes even longer for good results 30-120 mins. Total surrender happens fast and can cause mind-conflicts. Defocusing/dissolution makes work/school-like stuff hard. The rest same as the first.

---------

Thats perhaps the most problem with these kind of meditations, the power of concentration on little things and mind-works get more and more lost. Fast pure bliss awareness vs. functioning in mental-based environements becomes the question. In this regard, mantra based meditation is much more stable. But at the same time, much more burning, much less silence and bliss because of much less meditation times.

I am very curious about Yogani's new "middlething". And would sign in for betatesting

[cosmic]

Just curious, would sensitive meditators benefit from vocalizing the mantra instead of repeating it mentally?

I read somewhere that chanting a mantra aloud is not as powerful as internalizing it.

Haven't confirmed this, since I've never chanted a mantra before.

Peace
cosmic

[Lacinato]

I had been having the same problem, for a year. I had overload symptoms with small amounts of IAM, but couldn't/didn't want to go down to nothing.

Well, the past month I have been doing breath-watching meditations. After a few days, everything smoothed out. I felt more like myself again, more like I have since I was a child. I still go up and down, but it is nothing compared to the roller coaster I was on before. I only do ten minutes though, with just a minute for the second meditation. I don't feel ready for more.

I also do samyama. I never experienced overpurification from it and since starting the breath-watching meditation, I have continued it, and starting to reap some benefits. Not sure if it would be the same for others, but feels worth mentioning.