Hi Alisha,
yes, I find "profound" a word that describes it well too.
There's a specific word which describes the experience of awe and profundity that I learned from a book by Carl Sagan - "numinous". It makes you feel small and yet significant. It's also translated as "experiencing the holy".
Looking at the stars can invoke it in me, but also something like music.
What you write about having problems maintaining cocentration in meditation: maybe I can help a bit because I do have ADD so I know how hard it can be. I did a Zen meditation course some years ago in which we were supposed to slowly breathe in and out, and count to ten with our breath and then start over. I often lost count at two or three because my mind just wandered off.
Now, this goes for ADD especially, but to a degree for everyone: it is not that it is hard to concentrate in general ... it's hard to actively control your attention. It is like it has a will of its own.
If something is not captivating or boring it's very hard to keep your mind focused on it.
If it is interesting or even profound and wonderful, it's dead easy.
Thinking about nothing - like in Zen - is exceedingly hard. It did, for the first time, give me an opportunity to look at my own mind almost as an external observer, and that was very strange! The way my mind worked most resembled a pinball machine with not one, but ten balls, and played back a couple of times faster. So it's not strange that it is very hard to think of nothing - I suppose even for people who do not have ADD.
But you know, the way we meditate is not by "clearing the mind". It is almost the opposite: the method we use - guided / active imagination - is more like "filling the mind". We use a
format which (if you haven't already seen the one that is somewhere here in the public section of the forum) is like a little story, or introduction:
"imagine yourself to be here, and there is <this> and <that>. You are looking out and see <that>, ... etcetera."This is very different! I found that these formats are very captivating and they completely engross my imagination. They typically consist of an introduction, some "grounding" and then a general outline - all in all no more than a few paragraphs of text.
After that, you are supposed to take over the initiative and from what I have experienced and read from others, this usually works very well.
There are a number of things you can do to help coming into this flow:
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music. I also found that listening to music helps me concentrate a lot. I have always used music - and almost always the same music. You could try if this works for you: if you can find something which really captures the essence of whatever you are traveling to, it helps you to focus a lot. For me, music by the composer Olivier Messiaen works really well. His music has a deeply spiritual and natural - a "Fëarian" - quality. There will probably be something that works for you.
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try to minimize distraction. I usually meditate indoors (both because I live in a busy town, and the weather usually does render meditation outdoors
not an option), in the (half)dark, and sometimes burn some incense.
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preparation. I found that it helps to read the format a couple of times, and maybe some related texts.
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meditate when you have enough alertness and energy. I tried a number of times to meditate when I was tired. It did not work - I do arrive where I want to go, but I just lose track of what I am doing, or get stuck somewhere, half dreaming, half daydreaming. It doesn't hurt, because eventually I return home anyhow - but it isn't exactly rewarding either. Plus, I find it somehow not fitting to hang around there yawning
It has still happened a number of times that I lost focus. Sometimes nothing happens for a while, or you cannot seem to 'tune in" and your mind starts wandering around, or (worse) you start to ask yourself these rationally inspired questions like
"but what am I actually doing here?" "I'm probably just making this up." "How can I tell whether this is real? Does it make any sense at all?" It has driven me to tears on a number of occasions, because I really felt lost. But I noticed that if you just hang on, and let such a mood pass over, eventually things will start moving again. Come to think of it, some of my best experiences happened after having experienced such a low episode first.
There is much more to be said about it, but maybe that is also dependent on how it works for the person in question. My imagination works very tactile, not very
story-like or very
visual.
My experience usually starts with feeling the light flow over me - I often
look with my hands even. I sense color, the feeling of the air, even how the air smells. How the grass feels to the touch.
This helps me to be more present in the imaginal realm, and move about there.
So, concluding ..
maybe it helps to realize that it can help to experience whatever happens in meditations with as many senses as you can. But it may be different for other people, of course. I usually don't experience very detailed dialogues like some do (though it has happened). I sometimes get clear visuals of the environment, but definitely not all the time. It is mostly rather vague and dreamlike; but I am slowly learning to "look through" that and especially afterwards I can very well draw or paint the places where I have been.
Hope this helps ...
Luthien
Author
Topic: Had an experience (Read 480 times)