Not really sure where to post this, so:
This was fascinating and I want to go back and watch it again. Highly recommend. It’s a documentary on David Bohm, whose ideas tied together spiritual concepts and theories in quantum physics.
70 minutes, available in full on YouTube.
I had an interesting, and new-to-me experience the other day while meditating. I watched an emotion rise up and then diminish inside me.
I was meditating, letting the thoughts come and go, when I noticed something happening. It was distinct and abrupt, and didn’t seem tied to any of the thoughts. I felt this energy rising up in me, like I was fumbling for something. It seemed to come from nowhere, this energy. It just blossomed up inside me, and I watched it move, and then it dissapated.
On the one hand, what I watched seems like the most common of experiences. It may happen all the time and we simply don’t see it. On the other, it was really extraordinary to see, witness, that emotion come up.
Have you ever fumbled to do a simple task, multiple timnes? Like reach for a doorknob and yet somehow miss, multiple times? … that’s what it felt like.
I was meditating, and suddenly felt this emotion stir. And it grew rapidly.
When I think about missing a doorknob multiple times, I tend to think I must not be really paying attention. Same if I drop a pencil a few times, or something similarly mundane … that’s how it felt.
And I witnessed it, watched it, BLOSSOM, grow, into this uncomfortable energy that I am familiar with. … And then it resided a bit. I didn’t go back to calm, but the energy pulled back and left me with a new baseline.
And it was unattached to thought, at least that I perceived, and that to me seems really interesting.
Anyone have similar experiences?
My takeaway: In meditation we often talk about how emotions and thoughts come and go, pass like clouds. But it’s all pretty abstract. Feels like I got to witness this uncomfortable energy bubble up in an environment that should have been benign. … Lately I think my anxiety exists and some situations just bring it to the surface–rather than the situation itself bringing the anxiety. Maybe what I witnessed is this idea in the wild. A negative emotion arising from no-thing.
Would you characterise this as a thought, even an abstract one, or was it just energy?
Observing the process of thought arising is a milestone along the path of mindfulness. The next step is recognition that there is no “vantage point” from which this is being observed.
I haven’t had these experiences, you should try to speak to a teacher about it.
I observed this to be thought-less, the energy seeming to arise spontaneously. I’ve kept thinking about this. … it was like witnessing a giant bubble unexpectedly rise and break the surface of water.
The actual energy, I’m familiar with. I don’t have a name for it, but I’ve felt it before. It’s uncomfortable, like anxiety, like I’m trapped and overstimulated. But I’ve nexer known it to manifest like it did in the meditation.
Have reached a strange and uncomfortable moment. … Meditation has helped me to see more clearly what’s going on inside me–the thought processes and emotions happening on a subconscious level. Not the surface-level monologue but something a bit deeper, more concealed.
The thing is, the more I see, the more I realize that my subconscious beliefs really don’t match up with the ideas I say I believe on a conscious level.
I kind of figure this is common, but I don’t really know what to do with it and I find myself harboring some negativity towards myself because of it. My subconscious beliefs were formed by a scared child, it seems. I try to have compassion for him.
These are all still just thoughts, levels of your mind. You will have more such epiphanies, and while they may be insight into aspects of your mind it would be error to become attached to their content, or to need to feel about them. Keep simply observing them and steering back to the focus of meditation imo.
Confirmed. Just took a minute.