nimitta, what to do with it?

[hydrogen]

I recently found out that I've got nimitta, the mental sign.

 

During meditation, I open my eyes look over my nose for a while, I can see a ball bundle of very faint white threads. They gradually become more and more dense. The color appears to be golden.

 

It feels like the light come from my third eye like a mini flash light (not a powerful one). I can project the nimitta on the ground, on a wall or other place. I have to move my head slowly for the nimitta to follow my movement or it stays in the old spot.

 

My question is what to do with it?

 

Can you post your personal experiences please? I don't care much about book recommendation mainly I don't know much about Jhanas and I don't have time to go through the terminoligy of various buddhist books.

Edited April 23, 2013 by hydrogen

[Tibetan_Ice]

I recently found out that I've got nimitta, the mental sign.

 

During meditation, I open my eyes look over my nose for a while, I can see a ball bundle of very faint white threads. They gradually become more and more dense. The color appears to be golden.

 

It feels like the light come from my third eye like a mini flash light (not a powerful one). I can project the nimitta on the ground, on a wall or other place. I have to move my head slowly for the nimitta to follow my movement or it stays in the old spot.

 

My question is what to do with it?

 

Can you post your personal experiences please? I don't care much about book recommendation mainly I don't know much about Jhanas and I don't have time to go through the terminoligy of various buddhist books.

 

Hi Hydro,

How do you know it is a nimitta?

 

The nimitta during breath meditation is a sign that the mind is very still. If the mind moves, the nimitta goes away. Projecting it onto the ground or moving your head slowly implies that you are thinking, volitionally controlling the body, thinking, directing musculature etc. These are require thoughts. And, if you mind is thinking, then your nimitta is not stable.If the mind is not still and stabilized, there is no nimitta. You are experiencing something else, it is not an anapanasati nimitta.

 

A proper comparison is this. Imagine shining a flashlight at night into a pool of water that you are stirring with a stick. You are looking directly down at the beam on the surface of the pool of water. The light from the flashlight bounces around on the little waves, causing the light to move and shine every which way. Once you quit stirring the pool of water with the stick (focus your stabilized attention in perfect rest), the pool of water reflects the beam of light back at you. The nimitta is the beam of light.

 

Although there are many nimittas, which technically is a mental representation of an element such as air, earth, water, fire etc, most Buddhists called the advanced sign that the mind is still, a "counterpart sign". For me, it is a very bright white light, brighter than the sun. When my mind is extremely still and my concentration is resting just in one area, at the mental representation of my understanding of the complete breathing cycle, the light appears. First, it breaks through for a split second. I get excited and it disappears. Then I relax and go back to stabilizing the attention on the visualized path of the breath. Then light appears again. It remains a little longer. I really have to work at it, not to get excited or be distracted, but sometimes, on occasion, the light remains. It looks like a sun. Then, on the rare occasion, I succeed and the light gets bigger and bigger and comes closer and then I'm immersed in it. Pure bliss/gone/dissolution. After, I find myself in either a huge open space, or some other state, or I bounce back out. The state is one of the jhanas.

 

Breath meditation is not easy to do. You really have train yourself and learn how to flop the awareness onto the same location in the internal mind and let it rest there. It has nothing to do with the physical eyes. I didn't even know I could do that (flop or rest my attention) until after a few months of steady, consisitent practice. It seems contradictory, to rest the attention while maintaining one-pointed non-distracted stabilization, but through trial and error I learned how. I can't do it every time, but I know what I'm striving for. You can always tell when you succeed because it starts to feel real good, blissful and fills you with wonderment. Sometimes kundalini kicks in an spoils the fun..

 

So, the answer is, learn proper technique and get a hold of "The Attention Revolution" by Alan Wallace. If you don't understand some of the terminology, learn it. Ask here. There are many practitioners who know the terms. But Alan Wallace is pretty good at explaining things. Another good book is "Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond" by Ajahn Brahm. He also has his version of the nimittas.

 

In my estimation, if the light is golden, you have learned to project the pineal essence out of the third eye..

 

Good luck.

TI

Edited April 24, 2013 by Tibetan_Ice

[hydrogen]

In my estimation, if the light is golden, you have learned to project the pineal essence out of the third eye..

 

One learn something new everyday. What is "pineal essence"? Is that good to project the pineal essence out of the third eye?

 

Thanks for the reply. I've got a copy "The Attention Revolution" by Alan Wallace. It's a very good book.