wilfred

welcome!

i think a lot of it is to do with karma fruiting, which can seemingly have no present cause (its just the conintual backlog being cleared) and our reality is very being shaped by what is going on in the heart, the base of our consciousness. so things happening are as much about things starting to appear a certain way than randomness. it's an intertwining, often self-renewing process. eg you feel like shit and things unfold in such a way that you have a bad day. they go from bad worse while that feeling is being worked through. it's manifesting through our reality and there's correlation at an energetic level. you're experiencing the effects of whatever caused a particular outcome and in the background there's always this resonance. i think the path is very much about becoming mindful of this process, at increasingly subtle levels.

the problem is this dream/astral stuff could be anything, ie delusions or created from our own subconscious, perhaps valid enough but still not the ticket. best to find a human teacher/master, then the real work can begin. if you have had issues this applies x100. the difference in progress may be clearing things and reorganizing over days/weeks instead of years or never. getting grounded is the key, not accessing higher planes. my 2cents.

master display

new Burgs blog on concentration, thought some meditation bums might find this insightful http://theartofmeditation.org/learning-to-play-the-instrument-of-the-mind/ goes along with what i've been saying about having a practice that restrains the mind vs letting it do its own thing as crucial. concentration seems to be the faculty people are lacking nowadays, with all the stimulation and gratification of technology etc. and also learning in a live environment for the best chance of making smooth progress.

only used mushrooms, powerful effect if you meditate while on it, potential for insights. the problem with these substances is they are unpredictable and hard to integrate any potential insight you get from them into daily life. certainly not be used regularly, that's asking for trouble. keeping your virtue and maintaining a regular practice is far safer and thorough for refining the mind, clearing issues. also getting teahcing/transmission from a human teacher i found many times more insightful than substances. when you've had the experience of being truly still (heart thing), nothing else compares, there's a depth and spaciousness about it that's absolutely incredible. meditation is supposed to be about refinement of character, coming to right view and part of that is keeping our mindfulness at all times. at the end of it lies an ongoing experience far more amazing than we could ever imagine. though with the right teaching/practice it can start unfolding pretty fast!

you might find this thread interesting, lots of good insights on this topic http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/38694-cannabis-effect-on-cultivation-views-in-ctm/

it unsettles the heart base which is where your real connection to things comes from. not possible to make proper progress with it. i think it can be helpful for opening the mind up and expanding awareness, but you can't do mind training and get truly still while dabbling with it. it messes with your energy too much, overeggs things. my 2cents.

showing gratitude! that's virtue right there

i think for the most this is right and like i said an effective practice will start to bring the mind around to right view. the other thing i would propose in relation to understanding the importance of virtue would be a direct teaching or transmission of wholesome states of mind. this could be game-changing in itself and greatly further our understanding of why we'd want to change our attitudes/behaviours. on retreats i've attended the dhamma discourses are laced with a transmission of what a certain quality of mind actually feels like. when it came to the one specifically on virtue i was grinning ear to ear afterward and slept like a baby that night. pretty remarkable considering how unsettled i was through the week dealing with 'stuff'. it certainly demonstrated what i needed to be working on to get into a better space. as westerners we're often very stubborn and need to feel what's on the other side of our BS to start letting go, improving our conduct or practicing in the first place.

############### Moderator Notice just a note that the Newcomer board will be more heavily moderated than other sections when it comes to taking threads off-topic. the OP has asked how virtue is relevant to spiritual practice. please don't turn this into another 'Karl Thread' (that goes for Karl and anyone replying to him) as we have plenty of those on the other boards. ################

one can understand the concept of karma quite clearly if we look at practice, the path etc as an interrelated cycle that goes virtue > concentration > insight they all feed into eachother. at a basic level, without virtue (behaving yourself, being a good person) you will be accumulating unwholesome karma (incoherence) which manifests as an energetic charge that hinders your ability to deeply concentrate (sharpen the mind) through meditation. so you can do all the practice in the world, but if you're still doing harmful things it's like swimming upstream. this doesn't mean we'll suddenly be able to drop our conditioning just by knowing negative states of mind are bad for us. so a practice is useful as far as it can start to purify and grind away the worst areas of our character. this could take tremendous effort to start out with and certainly the right sort of practice/teaching to get results. people talk a lot about energy this, energy that, chakras etc but it is the refinement of character that is the true marker of our progress. how do we feel in ourselves and by extension how are we treating other people?

virtue is the basis for all practice. practice is only about bringing the mind to 'right view' to perfect our virtue, so in theory you don't need to practice if you're behaving yourself at all times, not reacting etc. merit gets a little more complicated, but my understanding is its like positive karma points. there must be an energetic component because they can be shared around too. seems like the more you have the more likely you'll be gaining some of the deeper insights into no-self etc. again it's about bringing the mind around to right view, knowing clearly what is going on.

everything is energy on some level. but yeah, especially if it's the sensation of things moving around.

best to seek out a teacher/healer IRL IMO. it's a common enough recommendation here but few seem to take it seriously. your story highlights one of the reasons (though there are many more) why. hope you find some peace in the future brother.

just energy moving around and reorganizing, pretty normal during meditation. not something to worry about.

yes.

yeah there is a lot of baggage attached to the k word think of it more as 'natural talent' perhaps, not everyone is born with the same 'talents'. as far as mind training, it's just purification whatever angle you're coming at it from. the practices i'm familiar with are meditations based on stabilizing concentration inside the body. this is the same process as anything that's grounding, just faster and more direct in terms of purification. i do think the right meditation practices are fundamental to developing this faculty of being able to feel energy, the reasoning being two-fold - speeding up the purification process and training the mind to perceive different forms of energy. if you google buddhist four elements meditation you should get some relevant content. not sure if it'll be approached in the same way as my practice but its all good nonetheless. or if you want to message me i can share some details of the online course my teacher runs that covers the healing/purification meditations in detail. very powerful stuff.

remember a lot of this will be based on karma. and that direct perception of energy is a product of mindfulness/awareness above all else. some people can feel a lot of energy off the bat, even as children, some people may have to practice for years even decades before they develop this faculty of mind. the right type of mind training could speed up the process significantly - ie four elements or fixing concentration inside the body, feeling a variety of different objects. i believe once the pathways are clear enough, the mind is refined, a lot of our reality becomes a pure energetic experience. part of that is that we ourselves generate a bigger, stronger, energy field. this is how we can break our attachments at the deeper levels - when we perceive the various energetic processes at work directly.

one thing you can see with animals is how perfect the life principle is as a response to nature, when uninterfered with. some of the perceptions that animals pull off are quite remarkable when compared to humans who have this tendency to needlessly churn things over ;] if you ever get to see a vulture high up a mountain, that's some serious high level awareness in the animal kingdom. they seem to be aware of everything around them for literally miles around, from all the way up in the clouds to down on the ground. the not killing factor is another characteristic of higher vibration creatures.

they mostly lack the higher mind faculties, running on instinct has its pros and cons. but some are clearly more mindful than others.