Personal Breakthroughs

[z00se]

I wonder if people could share some of their personal breakthroughs and realisations because i wonder if everyone has similar or different experiences, and if any similarities depend on similar cultivation methods.

 

Also perhaps since anything is possible, other's experiences can give us ideas of some breakthroughs we have not had and that we perhaps may like to have and we can use the imagination of others and our own to see if we can have similar ones. Maybe it's not authentic but we can still have fun trying - who knows what might happen. I realise this is a sidestep from the goal of meditation but we should have fun with our lives and play with our bodily chemicals and live it how we will, even if it is not according to how the 'greats' in the past have taught meditation.

 

I'm sure many people have many many experiences but i wonder if they could share only some of the most memorable to them, in chronoligical order (ones that happened first higher on the list) and also include your cultivation method and duration of practice.

 

Some of my biggest breakthroughs are below. Whether if they were real or only imagined by my mind i cannot tell, but i surely felt them all.

 

Methods:

Just relaxing with breath (10 years)

Mantak Chia's Qigong Basic meditations including all the Fusion practices, and Iron Shirt I & III (about 3 yrs)

Taiji 6 months (Zhu method - not famous)

 

1. Feeling so relaxed from deep breathing - i felt weird and strange i had never been so relaxed before.

 

2. Using the inner smile and mentally doubling repetatively the intensity of the feeling, along with further smiling until my whole body felt so loved up my eyes rolled in the back of my head and i couldn't handle it any more and i had to stop (It took building up over about 5 days of smiling often while at work and in meditation). Recently with Iron Shirt III i've found i can make this happen more easily.

 

3. The microcosmic orbit finally going around by itself... i only watched it moving around.

 

4. As qi became stronger and many blocked meridins began to open, the meridians felt like a kinked hose system. As the qi got stronger it would push open a kink then the water would flow through, but because the qi was still the same amount but now more of the hose system was open to qi flow the pressure of the flowing qi was lowered. Each time qi pressure would increase again until more kinks or blockages released then the pressure would be lowered.

 

5. When i practice well, the bubbling springs points on my feet feel fully numb and my feet feel like they are magnetically attached to the ground at those points. Also my touch feels magnetically attached to the top of my mouth. I can pull it away but it wants to go back there as soon as i relax the muscle pulling the magnetically attached parts together.

 

6. Being more easily able to detect tenseness in my body and trying to relax it. This took me a long time in the beginning... i didn't know i was tense, i just felt normal.

 

ONE LAST THING: If people will share their experiences, please no bagging them out because this will do nothing to encourage others to share their experiences so that we can all benefit.

[goldisheavy]

I used to practice lucid dreaming to try to understand the nature of reality.

 

One time I had this experience. I wake up, and take a shower and get dressed for work. I am about to go to work when I wake up again and have to repeat everything. Then I realized that there is no way to distinguish dreams and what we call "reality". The sky is the limit. If you can imagine it, it is possible. If you can't imagine it, it's also possible.

 

Before this experience it was hard for me to understand that dreams and reality are the same thing. I thought that dreams were clearly different from reality.

 

The only relevant question becomes now, "Do I want it?" And also, "Can I handle it, if it becomes my day to day reality?" That's the big one right there, at least for me.

 

Also, since the present manifestation is one I intend as well, letting it go is not easy. It's like letting go of your favorite toy.

Edited July 20, 2009 by goldisheavy

[hyok]

Apparently it's not good to talk about experiences and attainments. That's what I hear.

 

Not that it always stops me because I see it like you do too. I dunno, seems like an arcane and outdated rule considering the state of humanity, but what do i know.

[fire]

Conflict.

 

Loosing everything.

 

Knowing nothing.

 

Being uprooted from any routine.

 

New places.

 

Complete detachment.

Edited July 21, 2009 by fire

[z00se]

Conflict.

 

I also feel conflict any time i have a break from practice and start again. As my energy increases i feel conflict inside myself and don't feel balanced or relaxed at all. After about a week it seems to work itself out though and i feel calmer and ok. Maybe this is different to the conflict u feel?

 

The only relevant question becomes now, "Do I want it?" And also, "Can I handle it, if it becomes my day to day reality?" That's the big one right there, at least for me.

 

I used to try to practice lucid dreaming and i got to the point where i could change some things in my dreams, like flip a coin and make it appear as to what i wanted it to be. It was pretty cool but for some reason i stopped maybe from laziness and i've tried to get back into it again but it's not as easy as it was last time and i haven't put enough effort into it. I had a friend though who was very good at it and could do it every night as soon as he fell asleep. He could change the setting/backdrop of his dreams and have or do anything he wanted in his dreams. He used to love sleep heheh. But he said sometimes if he had nightmares it was a battle to try to control them and he'd have to fight against them in his sleep and couldn't control the nightmares so well.

Edited July 21, 2009 by z00se

[Josh Young]

I can tell my dreams from reality now, when I dream I can do anything.

When I was a boy, I could not, but I had a series of nightmares that repeated for years, I then found myself knowing I was dreaming because I had been there before, and then I began to be able to change the dream.

 

In reality I cannot fly or travel a thousand miles in an instant, yet in dreams these things are easy and natural.

 

I know of the illusion of reality, but it is not the same as the illusion of dream for me. The dream is like an illusion in an illusion, reality is like an illusion.

 

My breakthroughs have been interesting.

I recall when I learned that I had been seeing auras my whole life but did not know I was seeing them. I realized that the extraordinary is the ordinary.

 

I recall having every prayer I ever made in earnest need or sincerity being answered, often immediately. I realize that the power is not my own, but I am free to use it as needed, when needed, if I but ask.

 

I recall realizing that I cannot know, and that conviction of knowledge was my greatest delusion. When I let go of that I had the clarity to see what I did know, it made me feel at peace in a way I cannot possibly describe. It was at once the acceptance of both the limitations of perception and the limitless nature of being itself.

Edited July 21, 2009 by Josh Young