Help with Negative effects of Meditation?

[gendao]

I think there's some general safety precautions here that you've violated - thus increasing your risk of "injury":

 

1) Don't do drugs (I heard they can tear holes in your auric field and also prematurely use up your "death energy," etc.)

2) Don't force things (unless perhaps you have really good control)

3) Ground (a tree can only grow as tall as its roots grow deep)

[rain]

................

Edited April 18, 2008 by rain

[Buddy]

Check it out:

http://kundalini-support.com/

[Buddy]

Here's a brief overview on what happened to Gopi Krishna (from Om-Guru.com):

 

 

Gopi Krishna was an office worker and spiritual seeker from Kashmir who was born in 1903, and wrote autobiographical accounts of his spiritual experiences. One famous one is Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness.

 

Two unlikely events led him to the practice of yoga. First, his father renounced the world to lead a religious life leaving his twenty-eight year old mother with the responsibility of raising him and his two sisters. His mother as a result pinned all her hopes for success on her only son.

 

Second, he disappointed his mother by failing a college house examination which prevented him from attending the university. He attributed this failure to his lack of mental discipline, as he had spent his time at college pursuing enjoyable subjects and ignoring those that would be required for the examination.

 

He felt great shame at this failure, and resolved from that point forward to live a life of simplicity and austerity. He would restrain his desires, reduce his needs, and gain mastery over himself. He rebelled against his father's choice of leaving the world, and instead chose to live as a householder and raise a family. He also adopted a routine of meditation as part of his mental discipline and practiced concentration exercises for a number of years. In spite of his religious orientation, he did not have a spiritual teacher and was not initiated into any spiritual lineage, which would have been a common practice for a religious Hindu.

 

Over a period of years, he developed the ability to sit for a period of hours in concentration without any discomfort. The following account which took place in 1937 describes his first Kundalini experience which occurred while he was visualizing "an imaginary Lotus in full bloom, radiating light" at the crown of his head.

 

Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.

 

Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by surprise; but regaining my self-control, keeping my mind on the point of concentration. The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. It is impossible to describe the experience accurately. I felt the point of consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light. It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of its perception, appeared to have receded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it. I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction. I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe.

Krishna, Pandit Gopi, Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1992), pps. 6-7

 

Shortly after the initial experience above, Gopi experienced a continuous "luminous glow" around his head and began having a variety of psychological and physiological problems. At times he thought he was going mad. He attempted to contact people reputed to know something about the Kundalini system of yoga, but could find no one who could help him through this difficult period. He adopted a very strict diet which helped him maintain his precarious mental balance, and for years refused to do any meditation (since he attributed all his troubles to the yogic concentration exercises he had been doing).

 

He was aware that a fundamental change had taken place in him after his experience of Kundalini. He believed that this experience began a process in which his entire nervous system would be slowly reorganized and transformed by the Kundalini energy that he awakened within himself. He conceived of this energy as an intelligent force over which he had little control once it was activated.

 

Gopi spends a great deal of time describing the fear and anxiety he had in dealing with day to day events after the above experience. The food he ate and the time he ate it became like a branch which a man grasps in rushing flood waters which saves him from drowning. He also acknowledges the importance of his wife's devotion and support in helping him maintain his sanity during the decade following his first encounter with the Kundalini. This portion of his account could be described as a heroic effort to deal with something bordering on a nervous breakdown. He was required to make a perilous journey into mysterious regions of the psyche, and he found it a very difficult and drawn out process.

 

The following experience occurred spontaneously about twelve years after his first experience, and only after he had been strengthened by the spiritually directed biological transformation he had undergone:

 

Without any effort on my part and while seated comfortably on a chair, I had gradually passed off, without becoming aware of it, into a condition of exaltation and self-expansion similar to that which I had experienced on the very first occasion, in December 1937, with the modification that in place of the roaring noise in my ears there was now a cadence like the humming of a swarm of bees, enchanting and melodious, and the encircling glow was replaced by a penetrating silvery radiance, already a feature of my being within and without. The marvelous aspect of the condition, lay in the sudden realization that although linked to the body and surroundings I had expanded in an indescribable manner into a titanic personality, conscious from within of an immediate and direct contact with an intensely conscious universe, a wonderful immanence all around me. My body, the chair I was sitting on, the table in front of me, the room enclosed by walls, the lawn outside and the space beyond including earth and sky appeared to be most amazingly mere phantoms in this real, inter-penetrating and all-pervasive ocean of existence which to explain the most incredible part of it as best I can, seemed to be simultaneously unbounded stretching out immeasurably in all directions, and yet no bigger than an infinitely small point. From this point, the entire existence of which my body and its surroundings were but a part, poured out like radiation, as if a reflection as vast as my conception of the cosmos were thrown out upon infinity by a projector no bigger than a pinpoint, the entire intensely active and gigantic world picture dependent on the beams issuing from it. The shoreless ocean of consciousness which I was now immersed in appeared infinitely large and infinitely small at the same time, large when considered in relation to the world picture floating in it and small when considered in itself, measureless, without form or size, nothing and yet everything. It was an amazing and staggering experience for which I can cite no parallel and no simile, an experience beyond all and everything belonging to this world, conceivable by the mind or perceptible to the senses. I was intensely aware internally of a marvelous being so concentratedly and massively conscious as to outluster and outstature infinitely the cosmic image present before me, not only in point of extent and brightness but in point of reality and substance as well. The phenomenal world, ceaselessly in motion characterized by creation, incessant change and dissolution, receded into the background and assumed the appearance of an extremely thin, rapidly melting layer of foam upon a substantial rolling ocean of life, a veil of exceeding fine vapor before an infinitely large conscious sun, constituting a complete reversal of the relationship between the world and the limited human consciousness. It showed the previous all-dominating cosmos reduced to a state of transitory appearance and the formerly care-ridden point of awareness, circumscribed by the body, grown to the spacious dimensions of a mighty universe and the exalted stature of a majestic immanence before which the material cosmos shrank to the subordinate position of an evacent and illusive appendage.

Krishna, Pandit Gopi, Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks), 1992, pps. 165-166

 

Gopi Krishna's account contains a wealth of clear descriptions of the variety of mental states he passed through in his encounters with the Kundalini energy. However, one area that stands out as particularly interesting was the change in his experience of dreams.

 

About a year after his first Kundalini experience, his dreams began to take on a "phosphorescent" quality and he experienced the transformation of his dream life:

 

Every night during sleep I was transported to a glittering fairyland, where garbed in luster I glided from place to place, light as a feather. Scene after scene of inexpressible glory unfolded before my vision. The incidents were of the usual character common to dreams. They lacked coherence and continuity, but although strange, fanciful and fantastic, they possessed a visionary character, surrounded by landscapes of vastness and magnificence seldom seen in real life. In my dreams, I usually experienced a feeling of security and contentment with the absence of anything the least disturbing or disharmonious...

Krishna, Pandit Gopi, Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks), 1992, p. 119

 

Gopi Krishna's graphic accounts of his experiences stand out as among the clearest journals documenting a spiritual transformation of any this author has encountered. He is honest in describing the difficulties and dangers of the spiritual path, and the intense pressure it can exert on the physical body. He is not a guru in the classical sense of one who has disciples. He is more of a seeker who later became a teacher documenting his experiences with the Kundalini energy in a number of books, in hopes of being helpful to others who encounter this extraordinary spiritual phenomena.

 

Gopi Krishna attended conferences in the West on Kundalini Yoga and died in 1984.

[林愛偉]

It was suggested to me that I repost this. so here it is...

 

I did not know that some of the energy meditation that i was doing was dangerous, i thought it was all good, I just recently found out that you can fry your brain using kundalini energy (I am not sure that what i am doing is kundalini, I don't know what it is, I just know that it feels very intense), does this apply to other energy?

 

It would explain a couple of episodes where i was jolted out of meditation and i felt as if i was on a bad acid trip. (the last thing i need is more brain damage, im a recovering drug addict of 4 years). Does all of this wear off? does it actualy do permanent damage or are they just temporary side effects of intense meditation?

 

I am confused about all of this because some places say that it is actually good, and that it is the subconscious mind cleansing itself by releasing anxiety, fear, trauma through your conscious mind and then out. anyone know anything about this or have any experience? or know of anyone I can get consultation on this matter from? Any help would be appreciated. I guess i didn't even realize what i was doing...

 

The main symptom that I have is bad short term memory and I am less attentive and more spacey, as well as some visual distortions..

 

 

It wouldn't be that Meditation is producing the "negative" affects. It is that the method you are using may not be suitable for you. Meditation is "Death of the Mind" If you are concentrating on a "thing", a "place", "feelings, etc, then you are in deep concentration, and meditation is the action which concentration reveals itself.

 

So it is just what you are concentrating on, not the meditating.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

[witch]

These energy orgasms that are the product of this energy masturbation also are not the path to spiritual growth.

 

growth shmowth! Although safety is always important.

[Maddie]

I'm curious about something lately. Can doing a lot of healing such as Qigong, flower essences, homeopathy, ect... make you very tired as your body begins using your energy reserves for the healing process?

[Friend]

Edited November 16, 2011 by Friend

[Birch]

Can doing a lot of healing such as Qigong, flower essences, homeopathy, ect... make you very tired as your body begins using your energy reserves for the healing process?

 

 

Can doing a lot of healing such as Qigong,.. make you very tired - yes

 

flower essences, - haven't tried

 

homeopathy,- worth doing IMO and IME a good track for healing

 

"as your body begins using your energy reserves for the healing process?" Banzai! And it will continue to do this until you work something out. Tends to be (IME) very fundamental.

[Maddie]

Can doing a lot of healing such as Qigong, flower essences, homeopathy, ect... make you very tired as your body begins using your energy reserves for the healing process?

 

 

Can doing a lot of healing such as Qigong,.. make you very tired - yes

 

flower essences, - haven't tried

 

homeopathy,- worth doing IMO and IME a good track for healing

 

"as your body begins using your energy reserves for the healing process?" Banzai! And it will continue to do this until you work something out. Tends to be (IME) very fundamental.

 

Hmmm thats sort of what I thought which is why I asked the question. Cause on one hand I feel like I am making a lot of progress lately, but on the other hand I feel sooooo exhausted that doing almost anything has been difficult. The reason I included homeopahty, and flower essences is not only because do I use them a lot, as I am using them right now, but also because they are considered "vibrational medicine". They cause your body to beging to heal itself, which to me sounds a lot like what doing Qigong does. So I was guessing that if your doing qigong, homeopahty, flower essences, and they are all causing your body to direct its own energy towards healing purposes, that is not going to leave a lot of energy left over for much else...

[Birch]

Hmmm thats sort of what I thought which is why I asked the question. Cause on one hand I feel like I am making a lot of progress lately, but on the other hand I feel sooooo exhausted that doing almost anything has been difficult. The reason I included homeopahty, and flower essences is not only because do I use them a lot, as I am using them right now, but also because they are considered "vibrational medicine". They cause your body to beging to heal itself, which to me sounds a lot like what doing Qigong does. So I was guessing that if your doing qigong, homeopahty, flower essences, and they are all causing your body to direct its own energy towards healing purposes, that is not going to leave a lot of energy left over for much else...

 

 

See Taomeow's post in her forum about effects of homeopathy on jing. I thought it well expressed and certainly in my experience of it this has been the case.

 

IMO there are some processes that only need adequate understanding and support to enhance. Healing IMO is one of them. However, not to confuse healing with "empowerment." In fact seems to me that many people embark upon paths looking to become "empowered" and they find they have a lot of healing to do first. Then (again from experience) it becomes the only thing you really want to know how to do. Well, I speak for myself again.

 

Edited to add this: http://www.shaktitechnology.com/enlightenment.htm

Edited October 13, 2010 by Kate

[Maddie]

I think I'm going through another one of "those" episodes, as I have been doing a lot of work on my solar plexus chakra, and for almost a week now I am simply exhausted. Think its related?

 

*edit: after thinking about this a little more, I'm glad I keep a record of my practice on here, it makes good reference material. I now remember back in October when I was working on my sacral chakra that if you read many of my posts prior to that I seemed to always feel guilty for having a sex drive. Then I began to work on it, and got really tired as I guess the blockages were being cleared out, and now I realize that its natural to have a sex drive, its normal, and I don't sweat it.

Now that I'm doing the same thing for the solar plexus, I guess thats whats going on.

Edited March 8, 2011 by dmattwads

[Birch]

I think I'm going through another one of "those" episodes, as I have been doing a lot of work on my solar plexus chakra, and for almost a week now I am simply exhausted. Think its related?

 

*edit: after thinking about this a little more, I'm glad I keep a record of my practice on here, it makes good reference material. I now remember back in October when I was working on my sacral chakra that if you read many of my posts prior to that I seemed to always feel guilty for having a sex drive. Then I began to work on it, and got really tired as I guess the blockages were being cleared out, and now I realize that its natural to have a sex drive, its normal, and I don't sweat it.

Now that I'm doing the same thing for the solar plexus, I guess thats whats going on.

 

 

Yeah, except I wouldn't forget that all those plexuses (nexuses) are connected to other stuff. And so not approach them in isolation. My wild guess is that your solar plexus training has had a spillover on both your lungs and your kidneys (I'm talking 5E TCM systems and not just organs so don't freak out ) and so hence the fatigue. In fact, generally speaking I probably wouldn't "train" any one chakra over another...but if it comes up, well that's yet another thing.

[Maddie]

Yeah, except I wouldn't forget that all those plexuses (nexuses) are connected to other stuff. And so not approach them in isolation. My wild guess is that your solar plexus training has had a spillover on both your lungs and your kidneys (I'm talking 5E TCM systems and not just organs so don't freak out ) and so hence the fatigue. In fact, generally speaking I probably wouldn't "train" any one chakra over another...but if it comes up, well that's yet another thing.

 

Yes your right cause the other day I was working on my lungs due to the spill over from my solar plexus lol, so yea you got it right ;-). It would seem today though that the organ of choise was my spleen. As most of my solar plexus work as been in relation to how I view women, with the spleen it was doing the healing sound to get rid of my rather obessive (lately) thinking about women. And not just thinking about them, but over thinking stuff like "did I say the right thing" "does she like me" ect... It was starting to drive me insane, and also become very distracting to doing anything else.