New depths in meditation?

[Nau7ik]

Hello all! So I've been meditating for two years now, every day for about 30-45 minutes. As of late, I've been noticing new sensations or feelings.

It's very hard for me to describe but I shall try... I've been feeling a calm, and in this calm a feeling has been coming up more and more frequently. The first time I encountered it I was worried? That's the wrong word but then I would snap out of that moment and my heart will be racing. It feels like when you're very still and on a ledge of some kind and it's that rush that you might fall off. Like tipping off the side but then you pull yourself back and your heart is racing. Almost like tripping on something on the ground. But this feeling or sensation is like a deeeep calm. I've considered if it was my falling asleep but I don't fall asleep in meditation. I'm aware and following my breath. I think I'm almost afraid to enter into that deep calm?? I'm wondering now if it's calling for a surrender of some kind. Like I said it's coming up more frequently as I continue to meditate. Does anyone know what I'm saying? I don't know anyone in my life who meditates, so I'm going this solitarily.

Anyway these things could be nothing at all or maybe something. Either way I am exploring and quite open to what may come up in meditation.

Does anyone here have anything to say? I would like to hear from others, maybe your experiences and journey with meditation. Feel free to share or speak thank you!

[Highrculling]

It sounds like you were approaching the threshold of a certain level of purity, so I think it's good. Hopefully someone will explain it further. I have not felt what you have described before, but I did feel something new in my meditation 2 days ago, for a short time, like 4 or 5 seconds short.

[Plenum]

if you want some comparative experiences, the book Zen and the Brain is an outstanding read.

The experience of kensho/satori is a very real thing

[Stranger]

Whenever in my personal spiritual experience I've felt myself to be on the threshold of something different, and pulled back in fear, I have regretted it ever since.

[Aion]

Consciousness changes as you meditate. It shifts along a spectrum of awareness with thresholds. What you feel as the response is the resistance to crossing the threshold. If you kept going eventually there will be a sort of 'pop' as you cross over the threshold and enter in to the next major 'zone' of consciousness. The first phases seem to be peaceful before they start to accelerate in to joy and bliss.

[Nau7ik]

Consciousness changes as you meditate. It shifts along a spectrum of awareness with thresholds. What you feel as the response is the resistance to crossing the threshold. If you kept going eventually there will be a sort of 'pop' as you cross over the threshold and enter in to the next major 'zone' of consciousness. The first phases seem to be peaceful before they start to accelerate in to joy and bliss.

Thank you all for the responses! I was contemplating this all yesterday and concluded that it's resistance I'm feeling. I'm resisting it. I was also thinking "what if I didn't resist it? What am I afraid of?"

Plenum, thank you for sharing that book! I will definitely check it out.

[loostudent]

Can "empty mind" meditation result in the trance state?

[Night Owl]

Your description resemble the feeling when sleeping and then you wake up with this falling sensation like you're about to die or something like that. During one of my deepest meditation I have found out that the further I could go into my memories of this lifetime, my very first memory or sensation is this. I still am not sure if it is the process of the body becoming conscious or if the soul only enters the body after a little while, but I have this memory like I wake up with this fear of falling and I am in my first bedroom, in my bed. I don't know how old I am in this memory but most likely under 2 years old perhaps even 1. I have reexperienced it with meditation as well as on salvia. And so I believe it is a very useful process to aim at going through it again on purpose, like many things can happen. I feel like like the resistance that comes with it is the result of the veiling of this thresold but there is no way to be sure what is on the other side, perhaps bliss, perhaps remembering, perhaps deep traumas. Whatever it is, it sure is a deep realization I think.

[sjel]

I too have recently experienced new clarity in meditation. For the first time really ever, I've experienced prolonged SILENCE. Two years of daily meditation and only in the past week or two weeks have I listened to just silence for 10-20 seconds at a time.

It is really an indescribable feeling. And I know I'm only just scratching the surface.

[Jeremy]

Ah I remember those feelings. I too had come to a point where I was having difficulty determining whether I was reaching a new point in my level of meditation or was I simply beginning to fall asleep. I came to the conclusion it was a bit of both. There is a state of consciousness just before sleep comes and I can't remember the name of it where many such practices occur such as astral travel, trance, etc.

This is where I believe this fear type emotion stems from. I would also get to a point where the silence would become almost deafening, I would feel like I'm spinning over and over, a high pitch would take over as I could feel myself going deeper and deeper down the tree of sorts. Getting to the root mind I think they call it. I would always get to a point where a bit of anxiety would arise and I would literally jerk a bit and it would pull me all the back to the beginning.

After this happened multiple times, I finally decided to force myself to go deeper and deeper by visualizing a tree starting at it's branches then the trunk then the roots by way of an elevator shaft of sorts.

This forceful deepening of my meditations is where I would reach some sort of state where I would begin to hear things. This was also one of only a couple times where I heard what I considered a spirit guide or friend of sorts. As I was in this state, I asked about a guide. All of a sudden, I heard a loud knock on a door, the opening of it and a feminine voice saying "here I aaaaammm" which snapped me back into a normal state as it startled me so much lol