Pain in the middle of the head, developments and practice

Dear all,

Since any effort to apply a hard kind of focus, even with the intention of dissolving the pain, only made it worst, I have started doing a soft focus kind of meditation. The soft focus approach really seems to work. The big pain in the middle of the head has waned considerably. And although it still makes the occasional comeback, it seems that waiting it out and applying some very soft focus on the sensations, without worrying about it, eventually dissolves it once again.

Interestingly, my practice seems to have naturally shifted because of this. It feels really natural to go from soft focus to just waiting it out, as relaxed and undistracted as I can, even in pain. I was just reading 3rd gear Q&A, and the sentence "I have no-dog in this fight" matches exactly the kind of meditation I've been doing for the past few days.

Something new seems to have developed in my ability to pay attention. It is as if before, in order to be undistracted, I needed to work proactively at it, with effort. Now I just need to kind of "remember softly." Interesting...

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Bruno

I went through a couple year period where I had constant pain and pressure in my forehead. Insight developed, things moved, and I haven't experienced that kind of pressure in nearly the same way since. I think Kenneth's physioenergetic process theory is probably as good a explanation for this as any. Oh, and the three characteristics, from an insight map point of view, describes pretty much this same type of pattern.

I'd love to see some physiological research on what's actually going on in the body / brain during this phase... It isn't pleasant.

"Not pleasant" is really an understatement, given that the pain was so strong and so inconveniently placed that my mind was furiously obsessed with it, couldn't think of anything else, and it perturbed every other activity in an utterly disruptive way.

My dark night has left me with subtle and not-so-subtle impressions of all-pervading resentment. The whole insight thing really feels like it needs to get done, so I can finally pick up the broken pieces of whatever will be left of my life. And since it feels that all my dreams and desires have been shattered in the process, and everything was revealed to be so utterly unsatisfactory, how this is going to turn out is a real mystery.

Meanwhile, I am left with this incredible urge to finish up, and all my plans and ambitions have been replaced by carpe diem.

Can't wait for the f*cking holidays

Hi Bruno,

I belive we got stream entry around the same time. I got it on the 1st of January this year. I started practicing the Witness in March and returned to noting and 1st gear practice in Aprilish and have been taking instructions from Kenneth via Skype video for over a month now. I am now third path for sure. I went through some intense periods of third eye pain and the iron skull cap during 2nd path, which is on occasion still occurring but not so strongly now. I remember being bedridden one time because of the sever pain in my brain that seemed to be caused by the rising energy bottle necking there.

I believe sincerely that I got through all that and progress became much, much quicker practicing a combination of the WItness and noting my way through the rough spots and then noting even during the extremely pleasant and calm spots. And when the mind was relaxed, I would ride the jhanic arc up the jhanas. I recommend doing the same only cos it is what I did and it worked for me. And now I get a very pleasant flow of energy at the brow which seems to allow access to pure abodes and nirodha samapati.

What is your current practice?

Nick

Hey Nick,

Sure, but make no mistake, those seven years you did of Goenka-style meditation really paid off.

Currently I do 20m once or twice a day of whatever feels most natural. For a while that was concentration practice, then soft focus, and now it's "undistractedly do nothing."

(It might not seem like a lot from a hardcore insight meditator point of view, but I have a very open root chakra, i.e. an awakened kundalini, and thus I'm extra careful. There was a time when I wasn't so precautious, and I was forced to stop meditating because the amount of sexual ecstasy was such a distraction that I couldn't do anything else for weeks. I go very deep in those twenty minutes though.)

Bruno

Bruno, what would happen if you were to do hours of practice per day (like in a retreat setting)? do you think that would be unbearable? Just curious

The base of my spine would start pulsating energy madly upwards; this would at first feel like incredible ecstasy and bliss, and tension/karma would begin to be released at a tremendous pace, to the point that I couldn't do anything else properly; as tension is released, further energy would be added to the already intense flow. All the while, it would be pointless to do any mental activity. If I were to proceed, this would eventually be taken to a tremendous peak. At the point when my body decided it couldn't take any more, it would trigger some safety mechanism (or I would just die), causing me to crash like I have never crashed before. Then there would be misery, disgust, etc.

The peak would likely cause brain damage of various sorts (and has done so, for a few people).

This is from reading various descriptions of what an awakened kundalini can do. I have seen all of these as possible directions of how my own experience could unfold, and I am not at all interested in pursuing them.

Eventually I will build up to more meditation time, but until my circuits get clean, and energy knows how to flow down as well as it flows up, this will need to wait.

Bruno

So do you think this is due to an unusual circumstance you have?
I mean.. many people do intensive retreats involving hours and hours of meditation and although it can get quite unpleasant I have yet to hear of someone dieing because of it..

So basically I'm interested to hear why you think meditation has such effects on you as opposed to others,
and good luck with your progress! keep us updated

Yes, I have an awakened kundalini, but I am not very advanced in the purification process.

Kundalini is just anything happening inside the spinal chord. If you feel stuff happening there, then it's kundalini.

From what I have read, comparing the descriptions of insight practitioners with those of yoga practitioners, things can be much more intense if you focus, or have focused, specifically on the kundalini aspect of energetic development.

The matter of kundalini awakening is based on a specific mechanism of the nervous system. Basically there is a device by means of which the base of the spine becomes somehow connected to the sexual function. This is part of the muladhara chakra. For me, on the months preceding stream entry, there was a very obvious and painful tension just at the base of the spine. The day after stream entry, I used vipassana techniques to dissolve that tension. As I did so, I had three times a huge surge of energy going up, it felt like a snake was going through my spine, from the base to the brain.

Ever since I only need to rest my focus in the base of the spine to feel a pulse there, which happens about once per second. When I am sexually aroused, it will become more intense. If I ejaculate, the tension will return for a day or two, but other than that the pulse is there 24/7. This is what I mean by "awakened" kundalini.

Kundalini does feel very ecstatic, but I found out the hard way that sexual ecstasy can be too much. After becoming so wired that I couldn't concentrate on anything else, I stopped meditating completely for about two months (dipping my toe in the water now and then for 10-20 minutes).

During this period, I did many grounding exercises. It was only after being very stable the rooting routine (1month+) that I've started adding 20m a day of meditation. And I seem to get a lot of juice from these 20m.

(continued)

Still the whole insight thing takes a lot of time Alas it seems that one really can't accelerate purification without adverse consequences

It might be hard to actually die from kundalini, since the body seems to have various protection mechanisms to make sure one doesn't explode. But it is frequent to have visions, fevers and seizures, and I have had mild occurrences of all of these. You can read gopi krishna's "living with kundalini" or biologyofkundalini.com for a couple of very extreme cases.

The most typical problem for someone with an active kundalini is to get into a cycle of extreme ecstasy followed by extreme burnout. A sort of physiological, full-body version of A&P vs. Dark Night.

I would really rather stay away from that sort of thing.

Thanks for your interest
Bruno

Bruno, far be it from me to diagnose you or offer any assistance since I have no experience with what you're going through. My only concern would be that if you're not already talking to someone who knows a lot and has deep experience with yoga and kundalini issues like yours you should be.

Thanks for the advice Chris,

Indeed I talked over the phone with a fella here in Amsterdam who is part of the "kundalini support network," wrote a book on the subject and everything. He basically made sure I was doing grounding exercises (which I had already started to do) and specifically warned me against doing too much meditation.

This is more or less the only answer I have found, even after extensive searching. "If it is too much, stop doing meditation, and do grounding things."


For now, my kundalini side of the practice is just grounding myself as much as possible (ankle rotations, squats, kidney breathing, joint exercise, and next semester I start tai chi), and I have resolved not to do any specific kundalini work for at least a year (It feels so good that it feels really bad).

But the whole insight thing seems to be happening simultaneously (e.g. insights into suffering), and any meditation I need to do does arouse kundalini a bit. So I try to stick with 20m a day.