Altered state
While meditating today, I experienced what seemed like an altered state of consciousness. It wasn't the first time. I've experienced different kinds of sensations and perceptions since I started meditating regularly last fall. However, I don't recall it starting until I began using meditation guides incorporating periods of silence.
Back in the winter, the first thing I noticed was paresthesia, a tingling in parts or most of my body, especially the extremities but also my chest and face. I've seen it described as a sensation of insects crawling on the skin, however for me it's a pleasant and relaxing sensation. It puzzled me. In some of the information I looked up, I found religious writers suggesting it was a positive sign of spiritual purification. I don't relate to that. I began practicing meditation not for religious reasons but to develop mindfulness as an approach to mental health. Other writers (both religious and non-religious) suggested some people experience paresthesia while meditating, that it's neither good nor bad, but not to let it become a distraction. That's how I've treated it. It's kind of pleasant, but I try not to look for it to happen, which is even a step down from expecting it to happen! It still happens frequently, but it has become less intense than the first two or three occasions. It's a purely physical sensation, but clearly it has something to do with whatever is going on neurologically when I meditate -- or else it has to do with how I perceive sensations differently during meditation.
What began happening a few weeks ago was more clearly a change in consciousness. From time to time, I began experiencing what are best described as daydreams. They are comparable to dreaming, especially the lucid dreams I've sometimes experienced during hypnagogia, the transition from being awake to being asleep. However, I would sometimes get wrapped up in these images to the extent that I lost lucidity (the awareness that I was dreaming). They wouldn't last long. Then I would snap back to the present. For a moment I would be discombobulated, aware that I was meditating but having forgotten what my focus was supposed to be. Never did I feel sleepy, although these daydreams usually occurred on days after I had a suboptimal sleep.
From the beginning of my training in mindfulness practice, I was taught to handle distractions deftly. It's not a matter of trying to eliminate thoughts and feelings during meditation, but learning how to let them go, and return to focusing on the breath -- or, after some experience in mindfulness practice, if the purpose of meditation is to deal with difficulty, to allow unpleasant thoughts or feelings to remain in consciousness, "on the workbench of the mind." Not to change them or make them go away, but to accept them. I've practiced all of this and found it very useful.
From the beginning, the instructors spoke of daydreams as another category of distraction. I didn't experience them at first, during the steadily guided meditations of the course. My distractions included feelings, physical sensations (including paresthesia), sometimes verbal thoughts, and especially abstract thoughts about the circumstances of my life. It wasn't until after I began using guided meditations with longer periods of silence that I began experiencing these vivid, disconcerting daydreams. In the context of the meditation practice, I treated them as distractions, always bringing myself back (sometimes despite momentary confusion) to the point of focus. However, I also felt it would be interesting and probably useful to explore this phenomenon at an appropriate time.
The past few days I've been working through a series of meditations (on Headspace.com) intended to promote creativity. It's probably my favourite series so far. It involves switching back and forth from periods of gentle focus on the breath (the default state for mindfulness meditation) and periods of letting the mind go free, thinking whatever it wants. The speaker previously compared it to flying a kite: sometimes you pull the string to keep control, and sometimes you let it go. It's very good. In fact, I'm finding it to be an awesome practice. I've had some wonderful ideas and phrases, and fascinating images have come to mind in the usual way.
Until today. I was imagining a scene, and then I could "almost hear" some music accompanying it. I haven't imagined any sounds yet, and as I was in the free-thinking phase of the exercise, I allowed my mind to follow that melody and listen to it. It was sweet and lovely.
Suddenly, a daydream hit me violently. It was the closest to a lucid dream I've experienced, but all the lucid dreams I've ever recalled have been pleasant or neutral. This one was frightening. There were no concrete shapes. I felt like I was a rocket barreling through space, with light and darkness streaming past me. It was accompanied by body tremors.
I chose not to resist the sensation. I had come here to access my creativity, hadn't I? My inner thought was, "Put on your speed goggles! Fasten your seatbelt!" I plummeted into a sensation of intense fear, knowing I had allowed it and that it would pass, as all feelings do.
It didn't last for long. The session proceeded. The recording continued its instructions to focus on the breath for a few moments.....then let the mind go free. I hadn't forgotten where I was or what I was doing, but I lost track of when I was supposed to focus, when to unfocus. I returned to the default: focusing on the breath. Two or three more daydreams flashed over me, but they were nowhere near as intense. I could hardly hear the instructions.
I don't know what to make of it. It wasn't relaxing! I have no particular desire to look for this kind of experience, but neither do I feel inclined to avoid it. One theory I have is that it's associated with buried unpleasant memories, because I've recently become open to the possibility (likelihood?) that I have some. Another theory is that this has to do with fears around creativity and the content of what I might create. Either way, I'm prepared to face that fear rather than push it away. But there may be another explanation. Probably.
Back in the winter, the first thing I noticed was paresthesia, a tingling in parts or most of my body, especially the extremities but also my chest and face. I've seen it described as a sensation of insects crawling on the skin, however for me it's a pleasant and relaxing sensation. It puzzled me. In some of the information I looked up, I found religious writers suggesting it was a positive sign of spiritual purification. I don't relate to that. I began practicing meditation not for religious reasons but to develop mindfulness as an approach to mental health. Other writers (both religious and non-religious) suggested some people experience paresthesia while meditating, that it's neither good nor bad, but not to let it become a distraction. That's how I've treated it. It's kind of pleasant, but I try not to look for it to happen, which is even a step down from expecting it to happen! It still happens frequently, but it has become less intense than the first two or three occasions. It's a purely physical sensation, but clearly it has something to do with whatever is going on neurologically when I meditate -- or else it has to do with how I perceive sensations differently during meditation.
What began happening a few weeks ago was more clearly a change in consciousness. From time to time, I began experiencing what are best described as daydreams. They are comparable to dreaming, especially the lucid dreams I've sometimes experienced during hypnagogia, the transition from being awake to being asleep. However, I would sometimes get wrapped up in these images to the extent that I lost lucidity (the awareness that I was dreaming). They wouldn't last long. Then I would snap back to the present. For a moment I would be discombobulated, aware that I was meditating but having forgotten what my focus was supposed to be. Never did I feel sleepy, although these daydreams usually occurred on days after I had a suboptimal sleep.
From the beginning of my training in mindfulness practice, I was taught to handle distractions deftly. It's not a matter of trying to eliminate thoughts and feelings during meditation, but learning how to let them go, and return to focusing on the breath -- or, after some experience in mindfulness practice, if the purpose of meditation is to deal with difficulty, to allow unpleasant thoughts or feelings to remain in consciousness, "on the workbench of the mind." Not to change them or make them go away, but to accept them. I've practiced all of this and found it very useful.
From the beginning, the instructors spoke of daydreams as another category of distraction. I didn't experience them at first, during the steadily guided meditations of the course. My distractions included feelings, physical sensations (including paresthesia), sometimes verbal thoughts, and especially abstract thoughts about the circumstances of my life. It wasn't until after I began using guided meditations with longer periods of silence that I began experiencing these vivid, disconcerting daydreams. In the context of the meditation practice, I treated them as distractions, always bringing myself back (sometimes despite momentary confusion) to the point of focus. However, I also felt it would be interesting and probably useful to explore this phenomenon at an appropriate time.
The past few days I've been working through a series of meditations (on Headspace.com) intended to promote creativity. It's probably my favourite series so far. It involves switching back and forth from periods of gentle focus on the breath (the default state for mindfulness meditation) and periods of letting the mind go free, thinking whatever it wants. The speaker previously compared it to flying a kite: sometimes you pull the string to keep control, and sometimes you let it go. It's very good. In fact, I'm finding it to be an awesome practice. I've had some wonderful ideas and phrases, and fascinating images have come to mind in the usual way.
Until today. I was imagining a scene, and then I could "almost hear" some music accompanying it. I haven't imagined any sounds yet, and as I was in the free-thinking phase of the exercise, I allowed my mind to follow that melody and listen to it. It was sweet and lovely.
Suddenly, a daydream hit me violently. It was the closest to a lucid dream I've experienced, but all the lucid dreams I've ever recalled have been pleasant or neutral. This one was frightening. There were no concrete shapes. I felt like I was a rocket barreling through space, with light and darkness streaming past me. It was accompanied by body tremors.
I chose not to resist the sensation. I had come here to access my creativity, hadn't I? My inner thought was, "Put on your speed goggles! Fasten your seatbelt!" I plummeted into a sensation of intense fear, knowing I had allowed it and that it would pass, as all feelings do.
It didn't last for long. The session proceeded. The recording continued its instructions to focus on the breath for a few moments.....then let the mind go free. I hadn't forgotten where I was or what I was doing, but I lost track of when I was supposed to focus, when to unfocus. I returned to the default: focusing on the breath. Two or three more daydreams flashed over me, but they were nowhere near as intense. I could hardly hear the instructions.
I don't know what to make of it. It wasn't relaxing! I have no particular desire to look for this kind of experience, but neither do I feel inclined to avoid it. One theory I have is that it's associated with buried unpleasant memories, because I've recently become open to the possibility (likelihood?) that I have some. Another theory is that this has to do with fears around creativity and the content of what I might create. Either way, I'm prepared to face that fear rather than push it away. But there may be another explanation. Probably.