Nikolai's Practice notes, Phase .2.

Just making sure you don't float away, never again to be seen on this nice little blue orb

"
Just making sure you don't float away, never again to be seen on this nice little blue orb

"

Fair enough. Each person is going to have different interests even when they are awakened. I am still Nick with all his quirky interests and curiosity for the weird and the wonderful. I wanted to end the insight disease more than anything, more than realisng non-duality, more than being a saintly person. I just wanted to be a normal person without all the crap that caused me to be such a miserable bastard all these years. Before I went and did a vipassana course, I was into all this stuff. After I got to my first A/P, I ended up cycling up and down the dukkha nanas without knowing what the hell i had started for 9 long years. A lot of depression and bad times there. I made myself and others suffer, and a lot of what I was interested in and made me feel passionate, went out the window. Now I am discovering that I can now be that normal happy Nick that I vaguely remember being prehaps when I was a young kid, but even better off. I always wanted to be Indiana Jones and now, in a sense, I can.

But come on Chris, you are over-reacting a little to all this no?. You think one is capable of floating off into blissland and getting lost and losing their humanity once awakened? I don't see that happening at all. I am returning to being more of the human being I always wanted to be, happier than I have ever been. And joy, joy, joy, now I can go and try and see if I can't astral travel, like Kenneth says he can.... but that aint gonna make me a hermit and neglect my loved ones.

Goodness, that is so extreme and virtually impossible to imagine....in fact I have plans to go back home with my fiancee to Australia to LIVE with my parents as I really want to help my mum and dad get awakened too. I mean, my mum got me into this stuff in the first place. I'm gonna now be able to pay her back big time. Certainly no floating away for me. In fact I feel so happy to be helping people here at KFD and elsehwere . It is the most fulfilling thing I have ever done . I love it! It's addictive and I dont think i could avoid doing it anyway.

Sorry, just let that come out of me....heheh

Nick, a smiley at the end of a sentence means funny. Joking. Yes, I was chiding you about all the excitement over the fireworks, and they really are just a sideshow. My second remark? A joke. But I see it made you think and I was aiming for that result with my first comment, so I'm happy.

Yes, it made me think.
But I'm interested in what you will say about someone awakened hiding from life. From this vantage point, I don't think it's possible, at least for me it's not.

Sorry for seemingly not getting the joke. It still made me think and this exchange is a good thing. People will not lose their humanity once they awaken, they will become "better" human beings with robotic legs and super strength muscles and laser beams coming out of their eyes and the ability to talk to animals. WOOOOOOOOT!

Smiley face

Nick, I'll state my case in my thread and you are welcome to comment there. Meanwhile, I'm sorry I said anything here, so I apologize to you. I don't mean to be such a downer but nothing, and I do mean nothing, is all good. You and I and every human being have to deal with good, bad and indifferent every day. Awakening is not different than that. I know you know that, so I'll slink off to my cave now....

Yes, it's true. awakening is not a continuous bliss out, although an occasional bliss out has occurred. Yesterday I was in an infernal dark night that lasted the entire day. My stomach and solar plexus felt like they were imploding. Misery guts....literally ....but different from before.....yes, we have to deal with all of it; the good the bad and the ugly. All of it. But you have to admit, Chris, from this vantage point, it is slightly easier than before , no? So in a sense, you do gain something. A choice, a radically different and wondrous new view point. I can really see how someone could use this awakening to be a saintlier person. There are threads of truth there.

Yes, absolutely, there are threads of truth there. But here's the challenge -- what is the real difference in the before and after? Do you *feel* any less? Really? Or are you different in another way that yes, appears to make things easier but is actually doing something else entirely? I'll leave you with that series of questions because they are very much worth pondering.

"After I got to my first A/P, I ended up cycling up and down the dukkha nanas without knowing what the hell i had started for 9 long years. A lot of depression and bad times there. I made myself and others suffer, and a lot of what I was interested in and made me feel passionate, went out the window. "

Gosh Nick, sounds exactly like my life. Sometimes hermitage actually seems like a desirable choice to this fella' here (just me & the trees)... Good to hear it's going away

"Gosh Nick, sounds exactly like my life. Sometimes hermitage actually seems like a desirable choice to this fella' here (just me & the trees)... Good to hear it's going away "

Hi Bruno,

Yes, for me, the desire to renounce life has gone away completely. No hermitage for me. I will be embracing life now as I realize that the infernal "insight disease", which plagued me for years, really influenced my behavior in ALL areas of my life. E.g if I went to a family gathering here in Chile (of my fiancee) I would be the boring gringo sitting in the corner feeling sorry for himself; Sitting there not being able to explain why the hell I'm feeling depressed and full of despair....how the frack does one explain dark night to someone? I stopped participating in life because of dark night. I am not afraid to admit that. I went inside. Constantly observing within can sometimes make you seem so aloof and that caused me not to make friends...only meditators will be my friends then we can talk about dark night...jesus!.......

BUT now...for example, on the weekend, I went to the very same place for the same gathering of family. And oh, how things have changed. No longer do i feel pulled to observing the misery within so as to keep the mind from reacting negatively. Now it is true freedom from that "clinging"....no stickiness to make this Nick into a miserable arsehole. I don't see it happening to me. I can't see it happening to me. At least in the past week. It just keeps getting better and better. I find myself in similar situations of pre-awakening and the difference in the way I interact with people and how people respond to me is amazing. All positive changes. I am no longer the miserable gringo but one who surprisingly speaks spanish without pause, who is contributing way more to conversations than before, without any negativity unfairly aimed at objects outside of myself. Big smiley face!!!!!

Still pondering those questions, Chris. You've given me something to do.

Wow, it's such a relief to read that, thank you. Particularly because your spontaneous descriptions of "being alone in the corner" sound so familiar.

"

Yes, for me, the desire to renounce life has gone away completely. No hermitage for me. I will be embracing life now as I realize that the infernal "insight disease", which plagued me for years, really influenced my behavior in ALL areas of my life. E.g if I went to a family gathering here in Chile (of my fiancee) I would be the boring gringo sitting in the corner feeling sorry for himself; Sitting there not being able to explain why the hell I'm feeling depressed and full of despair....how the frack does one explain dark night to someone? I stopped participating in life because of dark night. I am not afraid to admit that. I went inside. Constantly observing within can sometimes make you seem so aloof and that caused me not to make friends...only meditators will be my friends then we can talk about dark night...jesus!.......

BUT now...for example, on the weekend, I went to the very same place for the same gathering of family. And oh, how things have changed. No longer do i feel pulled to observing the misery within so as to keep the mind from reacting negatively. Now it is true freedom from that "clinging"....no stickiness to make this Nick into a miserable arsehole. I don't see it happening to me. I can't see it happening to me. At least in the past week. It just keeps getting better and better. I find myself in similar situations of pre-awakening and the difference in the way I interact with people and how people respond to me is amazing. All positive changes. I am no longer the miserable gringo but one who surprisingly speaks spanish without pause, who is contributing way more to conversations than before, without any negativity unfairly aimed at objects outside of myself. Big smiley face!!!!!"

I love that.
I really don't see the point of a spiritual life if it just makes one miserable, loney, and aloof.
I want to be happy and peacefull RIGHT NOW no matter what BS is going on inside or out.

A happiness not dependent on conditions... Nice one Mike, you seem to have a solid goal and all the tools available here to realize it...

I'm waiting in Starbucks until a lesson I have to give in an hour. As I type I feel the most powerful energy surges throughout the body. They are so intense it's making things get wierd. Thoughts and stuff, it's actually hard to think straight. So much energy. Yesterday and this morning, I felt so much pain, pressure and gurgling in all the chakras spots especially the heart, solar plexus and stomach region. So intense. And now, over the past hour, it got so intense I just froze in my chair....couldn't function properly. It felt like someone had gotten a high powered water hose and stuck it in my heart region and turned it on. A violent gushing flow of very strong vibrations flowing through every part of the body. The heart feels the most active. Very strong "flow" of vibrations causing the breath to be quite erratic. I feel my hands and legs feeling extremely sensitive and shaky as the energy is reaching there too. A complete free flow of extremely strong vibrations throughout the body. Quite an energetic upheaval.

Question: Anyone else go through this after having a significant perception shift? I feel ok mentally but physically the body feels like it's being torn up inside by so much energetic movement and my heart can be felt beating throughout my body, even my mouth!

My goodness....

That happened to me the day I sent you that PM... its calmed down... perhaps you could consiter switching to green tea?

; ) P.S. man Nick I think for the first time since pre-path I have fruition envy... I think i'm gonna try to play around with some lucid dreaming though... for some reason that interest me more right now than the siddhis or fruitions... cheers

Nikolay I got that very intensely a few months after stream entry - the energy was so much that I couldn't function. Chi Kung helped somewhat, but eventually I stopped meditating completely, doing only rooting exercises such as the "three amigos of rooting" ( precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/IS_ThreeAmigos.htm ). Things calmed down, and now I keep my energy in check (i.e. I slow down if it gets too much). My idea with energy practices is to slowly and gradually build up until I can handle large amounts of it.

Hi Nick,

I felt something similar after my meeting with Kenneth. What I did was to concentrate on each chakra from the root chakra to the crown chakra. I then held by breath while focusing behind the navel. When I couldn't hold it anymore, I dropped it on the root chakra and allowed it to flow up along the spine through the crown chakra on the out breath. What followed was a powerful kundalini experience throwing me in the most ecstatic bliss for more than 20 minutes. I then collected the energy in the heart where it turned into a state of deep joy. The pressure that I had felt around the heart for about a week melted and the joy kept flowing for about 16 hours. I could not have done it before awakening, since the crown chakra wasn't opened sufficiently yet, which could have caused me a strong headache.

If the energy cannot be released through the crown chakra, I found that the best thing to do to stop all energy related problems is to:

- stop meditation as well as any form of energy work for a few days;
- eat red meat, like a good Chilean sirloin steak;
- do some sport or long walks in the countryside.

Thanks guys. This morning, I feel it has all calmed down. But I'll definitely keep this advice close to heart when and if it happens again. It was quite a trip! Feels like my whole body is one big battery. Maybe I could power a city with it. hehe! All my chakras are "highly" active. I've never actually had them all so active at once. And when i say active, it's so very obvious that they're energy vortexes. Yeh, my corwn feels like it is the end of a water hose with so much energy spurting out there.

Alex, I ate so much meat over the weekend that any mention of a chilean sirloin steak makes me cringe. Chori-pan on the other hand....

I am realizing very fast that awakening doesn't mean you ain't gonna go through a bit of suffering. I'm laying in bed having put my back out last night and currently I am experiencing a hell of a lot of pain there.

I am also discovering that even though the second arrow has been removed, there are so many 1st arrows. Haha! I am still Nick with all his "baggage". I just don't seem to linger in that negative baggage for long like before. And I can see that perhaps it will be a lot easier to let some of that baggage go. Some of it though, the stronger habitual tendencies that are still there in all their glory, may take a little longer.

But apart from this nice little lesson in humility, I feel good. My back is in so much pain, but my mind remains calm. If I feel a sharp dolt of pain, I will react with a grimace and cry of pain.But that seems to be a habitual reaction. It's so weird without the clinging and sticking element. It's like there is suffering there, but now it's not "I" am suffering but it's just suffering in suffering. I'm gonna need some more time to try and explain the difference better.

I have sat a few times in the past few days. I have passed through some dark night phenomena. It is a strange experience without all the stickiness like I just said above. I have no intention to do anything in the sits. The mind just watches. No intention to do something arises. And I just watch it all bubble and spurt, grow and shrink, expand and contract without any desire to manipulate. Eventually the mind settles down into the calmest state I have ever experienced. The amazing thing is, I can start having a conversation in it with myself and play with watching thoughts form and evaporate. The non-stickiness allows for the mind to spot so much of the detail of the mind states that arise. Life is good even though I feel like an old man at the moment.

I'm sending you more back vibes, Nick.

"
I'm sending you more back vibes, Nick.

"

Excellent! Thanks Chris.

You know, we have no way of proving if this works, but it could be just the fact that I know you are including me in the generation of metta which could synch up with me here and that same generation of metta start occurring within myself FOR myself. Same thing as the jhana tour videos. I'm tuning up to your generation of metta vibes within myself. Does that make sense? So maybe the key is to tell that person that you are generating metta for them, then they resonate with that act and generate metta within themselves. Similar I guess to the placebo effect. Or we can believe that those vibes can TRAVEL THROUGH THE AIR!!! WOOOOOOT!!!


P.S. Sending you some powerful fruition bliss wave soaked metta vibes to you and all your family including your aussie dog!!! Should be traveling over Peru as we speak! Hehe!

NIck, it's quantum effect called "action at a distance" and has been proven to be effective at the sub-atomic level

See:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-action-distance/

Well Nick during my morning sitting when I was high up in the arch I shifted to Metta and visualized sending some vibes all the way down to South America... Hope it helped...

Thanks guys,

Back is now better. Spent the weekend with my Chilean host parents in the south of chile, freezing winter country style. A nice trip away from the big smoke. I went with the purpose of "paying it forward" too. My chilean mum is very "spiritual" . I have a feeling she had an A/P event years ago. She actually had died during a routine liposucction (vanity=south american women) and had a really amazing experience of leaving the body and seeing all sorts of strange beings and lights and A/P kind of stuff. She wentthrough a lot of depression after it too. Makes me think she may have set something off. She has been pleading with me to teach her some meditation. So we had two days of a few sessions where I talked her through Kenneth's approach to noting. Focusing on the bodily sensations, their tones, mental states and thoughts in sequential order and then eventually all mixed up. I made her verbalize her noting out loud. It was amazing. She sat there for an hour and continuously noted with me helping her keep on track. She went through hell and heaven in one hour and exhibited some pretty obvious experiences of the first couple of insights. All in Spanish of course. A very interesting experience for me. And for mi mama chilena. She couldn't sleep all night cos of it. Jeje!