synaesthesia and insight---help please!

"and being dismayed at the response of some forum-goers indicates identity there"

Well, I'm not yet free; par for the course.

I notice lots of instances of feeling vague negativity from stuff in life. In the end, it's all stupid, and it's all about 'me' and 'my' expectations about how things are supposed to work. None of the instances seem to be ones that I can glean any more insight from than any other. Web browser loading slowly? People here inclining away from providing the kind of response that the forum exists for? Vaguely annoying, vaguely tension-producing, and pretty damn similar as far as I can see apart from circumstantial differences (technological vs. social expectations).

For regular affects, once I got to the point of being able to discern the actual sense, I just keep looking at the actual sense; everytime the affect arises I notice that it arises at a different moment than the actual sense, watching as it flickers on and off, recognizing on some level that it is not actual, that it sucks, and inclining towards seeing what underlies it. Eventually the affect goes away, because I've discerned the actual experience either explicitly or implicitly.

The problem with synaesthetic affects is that, for some forms of these apparently synaesthetic experience is, I haven't gotten to the point of being able to discern the actual synaesthetic sense reliably. So I see a lot of affects that have an unexpected modality (e.g. looking at a spinning fan causes a kinaesthetic / tactile affect, in the same "place" that a normal tactile experience causes such an affect), but "where" the actual object in the actual synaesthetic sense is (which the affect distorts) is mysterious.

I've tried the method you use, but it seems like it only works well when the ability to discern the actual sense is above a certain threshold. (cont)

(cont) When I was on retreat about two weeks ago, I remember staring at a fan multiple times per day, recognizing the kinaesthetic affect, and drawing a blank about what was underlying it.

About 2b, I'm not talking about an experience of moving my ears in relation to sounds in the environment; I mean that the change in perspective in visual objects itself as I move my eyes in relation to them has a sound. It's like 2a, which is why I enumerated them the way I did. For example, each motion of this thing has an affective sound to me, even though I don't hear it via my ear: images.daniweb.com/avatars/4th%20Order/e_wheel_animation_64.gif

I can stare at this little graphic for a long time and try to hear the actual synaesthetic sound underneath the affect, but for whatever reason, I only get a peek at it once in a while. Similarly, I tried using this video on repeat as an insight object for awhile ( www.klab.caltech.edu/~saenz/movies/movie_diff.avi ); the affective sound that each appearing circle makes is perfectly clear to me, but looking for the actual synaesthetic sound gave me a headache and didn't really go anywhere important.

And this is an experience for which I *have* seen the actual synaesthetic object and have some idea of "where" to look! I've gotten to this point with some of these experiences, but not all.

I don't know if these kinds of descriptions are leading to anything practical. As I said to Owen, I'm not really looking for practice advice...I wrote up this explanation because you asked, and because you did me the favor of actually telling me about your experience, but unless you have some really good idea to share, I'm inclined to let the subject rest...writing about this stuff is really uninteresting to me and I started this thread only because I needed some info for a practical reason.

"can you describe how the synesthetic-affective stuff differs from the synesthetic-actual stuff a bit more? maybe can try to figure something out here... "

Forgot to respond to this. Synaesthetic affects and synaesthetic actuality differ in exactly the same was as standard affects and standard actuality differ.

The only difference between the standard and the synaesthetic cases that I can see is that the synaesthetic stuff has a cause in an atypical sensory modality, and the actual synaesthetic objects appear, in some way, not to arise in the same sense as the actual standard objects, but in their own separate synaesthetic version of the sense, which is still actual. (I'm not sure that this is 100% true but it gets across the idea; they seem to be in a "different" place, whatever that means.) Synaesthetic affects and standard affects arise in the same "place"; e.g. imagining something and affective visual synaesthesia appear to be experienced in the same way, and there's no way to distinguish them except by noticing what's causing them, or by noticing that visual synaesthesia is rather abstract whereas imagination is concrete.

"EndInSight, I spent the last few months working with a student who had the same issue. Trust me on this, I know what I'm talking about.
"

Related to my response to Owen, this is a public service announcement, intended to be informative, not intended as a jab at Owen.

There are people in this world who are close enough to "normal" in behavior but, despite that, whose minds operate in such different ways from "normal" that your ability to understand them by extrapolating from your own experiences and those of people around you is much more limited than you might think.

I have met so many people, riding their high horses, who have been *sure* that they knew what made me tick, and knew it much better than I did, and had no hesitation to tell me that, or to try to force things upon me that were supposedly for my benefit but could not possibly benefit me, and so on. And it always seemed like some bad joke that I was placed in a world where people were so closed-minded that they couldn't acknowledge the bare possibility that, in reality, they had no idea what went through my head and how I looked at the world. Not because I had thoughts or motivations that were incidentally different than theirs, but because some of the basic forms of thinking that underlay their behavior were nearly absent in me, and vice versa.

Today I've gotten used to it, and think it's funny at best, annoying at worst. But when I was younger and immature, it fanned the flames of a deep dislike of "normal" people and what appeared to be the morass of nonsense and stupidity that I believed I saw in all the ways they thought and behaved, and especially the overwhelming inability or unwillingness they had to conceive of a person who functioned well in society but whose inner workings were nonetheless inscrutable to them. (cont)

(cont) The details of how my mind may be different are irrelevant, and not anything I'm inclined to talk about here; but if you read my practice journal, my writing style, the experiences I describe, the ways I describe them, etc. I'm sure it will strike you that, perhaps, there is *something* different about me. I'm not talking about anything so crass as a psychiatric condition (I have no such diagnosed condition); I'm talking about something that appears to me to be, in a way, *much* more fundamental than that.

If you ever catch yourself about to get up on a high horse and (based on your beliefs about "how people work") pontificate about someone else's motivations or psychology or thinking, or make a suggestion or demand or ultimatum based on that kind of internal pontification, or do something "for their benefit" that they simply don't want, please ask yourself how sure you are that the other person thinks in a way remotely like the way you do, and, if they don't, how sure you ought to be that you really understand much about them. (cont)

Doing that is for your benefit. This is for theirs: in the case of a young person (say college age or younger) who appears to be normal enough yet different in some fundamental way, ask yourself whether what you are about to say is so important that it's worth the risk of causing them to resent you and all the "normal" folks like you a little more than they already do. This form of resentment easily blossoms into a kind of hatred which is hard to let go of. To imbue a person with that kind of hatred is to more-or-less ruin their life.

I have known a few people who carry this kind of burden. One person in particular has a mind that is quite different from "normal" (in ways that I can't fully fathom; "difference" manifests in myriad ways), but a perfectly sane and rational person despite that. The vitriol in her voice when she talks about typical people, their thinking, and their behavior, is truly disturbing. As far as I can see, it comes from her going through life while people constantly made wildly false assumptions about how she thinks, and who then acted (in myriad ways) on those assumptions. Her hatred seems to be a deep affliction for her; were it not for people's willingness to make blithe assumptions, she might not have had to bear it.

The only reason I mention this here is because I saw this interaction with Owen as a microcosm of the kind of thing that I found problematic earlier in my life, which is problematic for many people who have not been so lucky nor fared as well as I have, and because, as a group of people who are interested in personal change and in investigating parts of their minds that most people are not, this issue might be something that many here can sympathize with and watch out for, even if they themselves have never been on the wrong end of this kind of interaction.

I hope that you find some value in reading this.

Hi End, in response to your question, which was an interesting one, on reflection I'd have to say the synaesthetic percepts I mentioned seem to be accompanied by, if anything, less affect all in all. The activities which I associate with these experiences: music, math, and language-aquisition (just made that connection too), are all relatively affect-free, or minimally affective. They are also all minimally inter-personal, even when being done with others, which is interesting to note, as the inter-personal is frequently the most affective dimension of experience (for me anyway).

BTW, I hear what you're saying about being atypical and the plight of the atypical. I had occasion to notice this from the outside at a toddler's birthday party recently in which a few kids really stood out as atypical, and the contrast was clear. The assumptions made by others clearly lay an unneccessary layer of psychological wierdness on top of what is basically a difference in processing style (thankfully, my circle of parent-friends are pretty easy going in this regard, as most couples in our group have at least one partner who is a bit different!). These kids had social quirks such as not getting certain ques, interrupting, different habits of eye contact etc which I could see were emerging from their different way of experiencing. It occurred to me that they could easily be coached in how to inter-act in a more relaxed and direct way if and as that coaching came from a non-condescending place which respects and values their modes of perception, and this was in fact effective, reminding me that I'd like to work with neurodiverse kids for the very reasons you mention. Anyway, I agree with much of what you write above, especially the part about the unhelpfulness of people jumping to conclusions based on extrapolating their own experience and the psychologically damaging effects of this on young people. It's an area that needs more understanding.

EndInSight, I have to admit that I was confused about this topic from the start. I'm not quite sure what you are asking folks for here. See, I have little experience with your condition thus little appreciation for your situation. So decided not to jump into this deeply until I either understand what you want from us or I can have a deeper appreciation for the issues you're presenting.

I will also say that I think everyone is offering suggestions that are meant to be helpful to you. I detect nothing but offers of sincere help, but the confusion over the topic's purpose (mainly this -- is it practice related or not practice related?) seems to have caused the "issues" you are reacting to now. So I would suggest that in the future you just be clearer at the outset, when you start a topic, about exactly what you want, if anything, from other posters. The fact that KFDh is a practice oriented place make practice and related issues the default assumption for every topic.

Chris, I think End has been pretty clear (but correct me if I'm wrong, End) about what he's looking for: help identifying the "actual" sense impressions which correspond with certain "affective" sensations involved in the spinning-fan visual-tactile synaesthesia. As you say, lacking personal experience with such a condition makes it hard to understand what is being asked. But I'm not sure it's due to a lack of End trying!

But I agree: *everyone* without exception seems to me to be posting with a sincere intention to be helpful. But i think following End's guidelines r.e. only posting with experiential reports of synaesthesia with an eye to discerning affective and actual synaesthetic experiences, rather than psychologizing or making assumptions about End's (understandable) frustration with posts which ignore his clear requests in this regard, would be wise.

I mean, it's like if I went to my neighbor asking for a cup of flour, being offered free use of their television, repeating my request, being offered a quart of oil for my car, and then my neighbor starts gives me a knowing look and says "My, for a fellow who claims to be only asking for a cup of flour, you sure seem awfully upset." Let's all lighten up and just let it go if we have no direct response to End's request.

"I notice lots of instances of feeling vague negativity from stuff in life. In the end, it's all stupid, and it's all about 'me' and 'my' expectations about how things are supposed to work. None of the instances seem to be ones that I can glean any more insight from than any other. Web browser loading slowly? People here inclining away from providing the kind of response that the forum exists for? Vaguely annoying, vaguely tension-producing, and pretty damn similar as far as I can see apart from circumstantial differences (technological vs. social expectations)."

when feeling vaguely negative things, maybe try activating delight, and hanging out in the 6th jhana.. it should make for a sharper contrast (negativity vs. appreciation). maybe you can try that for the vaguely negative synesthetic stuff, too. i notice you said the fan spinning is 'unpleasant in itself', yet how as a kid you found it interesting and not unpleasant.. that indicates there is a relationship to it, there, and maybe just hanging out in the 6th jhana and focusing on the mental negativity (or hanging out in the 7th and noticing the 'unpleasant' vedana) (or hanging out in the 8th jhana and noticing formations ) will help. actually i'll suggest that 8th one again... try getting an idea of what formations are like, and then try to look more closely at the synesthetic affect as a formation, while in the 8th jhana... might be easier to see through it there. (basically your problem is seeing the actual - so tune into the actual aspect of the jhana and get very sensuous that way, different jhanas having different aspects that might help differently)

good luck, in any case. looking forward to hearing descriptions of your experience when AF. (also maybe you can ask some AF people directly for advice, perhaps they can tell you what to look for, in terms of how not to have not knowing this slow down your practice)

Jake, I will repeat just one more thing -- this is a dedicated dharma practice message board. A topic that is so closely related to practice and that sounds like a practice oriented issue is going to generate practice oriented responses. It's not EndInSight's fault. There is no fault here, just some misunderstandings hopefully now all cleared up, compliments to everyone involved.

Chris, although it's a little late, all you have to do is look at a spinning fan and tell me what experience you have. Does it *look* like it's spinning or does it also *feel* like it's spinning?

It would have been more helpful earlier (with respect to guiding my search for the actual object), but it can still be helpful now. Even if you don't understand why, take my word, that *is* practice-oriented help, and that's what I've been asking for explicitly all along. Not advice.

Okay, there are several ways I can "see" a spinning fan. If I just look at it in an offhand or relaxed way I see just a spinning fan. The blades are moving in a blur and nothing is generated internally but the usual process of perception. If I try to follow the blades with my eyes i can actually get dizzy as my eyes move in a rapid circular pattern. This generates a much stronger internal set of reactions. If I am concentrated enough while watching a spinning fan, depending on how fast the blades are spinning, I will sometimes see the position of the individual blades, or maybe just one of the blades, as if in a stop motion photograph.

Does that help?

"Hi End, in response to your question, which was an interesting one, on reflection I'd have to say the synaesthetic percepts I mentioned seem to be accompanied by, if anything, less affect all in all. The activities which I associate with these experiences: music, math, and language-aquisition (just made that connection too), are all relatively affect-free, or minimally affective. They are also all minimally inter-personal, even when being done with others, which is interesting to note, as the inter-personal is frequently the most affective dimension of experience (for me anyway)."

Interesting. I assume you get some kind of enjoyment out of this kind of experience, no? Very little of that is affective? If so, if you can generate the experience reliably (and it sounds like you can), perhaps that would be a way to direct yourself towards a PCE, as it would be forcing experience in the direction of apperception because the percepts would by default be so non-affective...

Still curious if you would share a math concept or proof that generates this kind of experience for you.

"I mean, it's like if I went to my neighbor asking for a cup of flour, being offered free use of their television, repeating my request, being offered a quart of oil for my car, and then my neighbor starts gives me a knowing look and says "My, for a fellow who claims to be only asking for a cup of flour, you sure seem awfully upset." "

Thanks for explaining this to others in a way that is probably clearer that I've managed to.

(In your previous post, you mentioned wanting to work with neurodiverse kids; what do you do / what are you training to do?)

To be precise, I'm asking for reports of people's experiences with an eye towards figuring out whether or not some of *mine* are synaesthetic or typical. (I've sort of figured that out, but more confirmation is always good.) There are more experiences I've found which are unlike what I've mentioned, but at this point it strikes me that I'm better off not asking about them here.

Beoman, thanks for the suggestions, I'll try checking whether jhana makes any of this synaesthetic stuff clearer.

I don't understand what it means to have a relationship with an affect (the spinning fan feeling) in this case. It's unpleasant for 'me'. It's like stubbing my toe; the only interesting psychological dimension to that reaction is that 'I' don't like feeling unpleasant things. Same for the fan. Nothing else interesting is going on. I've stared at enough spinning fans (and other similar stuff) to know.

(EDIT: You wrote: "i notice you said the fan spinning is 'unpleasant in itself', yet how as a kid you found it interesting and not unpleasant.. that indicates there is a relationship to it"

With an eye towards my "public service announcement", notice how you appear to have made an inference based on an assumption about my experience (that the unpleasantness of this feeling is somehow different from the unpleasantness of affective pain, and has a unique psychological dimension) and gave me advice based on this "just-so" belief without questioning yourself on whether you had an accurate understanding of what the feeling of spinning is like, or just extrapolated from what you imagine it would be like if you experienced it. *This* is the kind of thing that f*cks some people up psychologically.

I'm not offended, don't worry; but I do feel compelled to point out how easy it is to act this way unless the issue of "neurodiversity" is kept at the forefront of one's mind.

To explain the difference over time...I have no idea. Kids like doing things like spinning in revolving chairs, which nauseate most adults. It seems that perceptions can change over time.)

"If I am concentrated enough while watching a spinning fan, depending on how fast the blades are spinning, I will sometimes see the position of the individual blades, or maybe just one of the blades, as if in a stop motion photograph."

Thanks for your response. I see you gave it serious consideration because the phenomenology of attention to spinning objects matches what I've noticed myself.

In the exact few moments where you can observe one of the individual blades, if the fan is spinning slowly enough that you can follow the blade around with your attention, I take it that you don't feel any spinning (apart from the possible dizziness, which is not what I'm talking about)? In that case, that helps; you would have a different experience than what I'm describing.

Yes, that's right. I do not feel the blades spinning if I follow just one, though I may get dizzy and then nauseous.

Unfortunately math, although interesting to me, seems difficult to learn without good guidance and lots of drills; it's the one subject that has proven difficult to self-educate on although I'm at least as numerate as the average person in day to day affairs and quickly grasp math concepts when I talk to scientists and engineers (I've only been to three or four years of school, until I went to college). Now I'm in an undergraduate psychology program in a very liberal liberal arts college with the intent of becoming a psychotherapist.

To answer your question, even simple arithmetic is perceived the way i described. Music theory (rhythm patterns and polypatterns, harmonic and melodic intervals, even timbre) is also understood directly by listening and "seeing" the patterns. Again, it's like a simultaneously tactile/visual percept. And yes, I think these experiences connect me to a less affected dimension of experience with minimally affective enjoyment. I used to feel/watch these patterns as I fell asleep as a young child and had regular EE's/nondual experiences falling asleep as a result, although of course I had no language for that and naturally assumed that was just what falling asleep was for everyone!

@EndInSight: the relationship i was pointing to is that very one - that 'you' dont like feeling unpleasant things. have you ever felt pain in a PCE? it's quite a different experience than affectively feeling it. the affect is the relationship, in this case - the relationship to that synesthetic actual feeling of spinning (if there is an actual one underlying the affective one - i'm not sure, and i can see why you might like to figure that out), same how feeling aversion + resentment to pain is a relationship with the actual sensations of pain, which aren't disturbing at all in that way.

by my spinning comment, i think i just wasn't reading clearly. i see now that in that sentence i quoted from, you yourself said it is an affective feeling. i was just pointing that out - that the unpleasantness is affective, and not necessarily inherent in the (synesthetic) sensation, which was evidenced by the fact that you didn't find it unpleasant as a kid: "I used to be fascinated by watching the ceiling fan in my room when I was a kid, because I thought it was interesting for 'me' to spin (apparently it wasn't unpleasant back then?);". so i just wanted to point out that you shouldn't assume the synesthetic sensation is actually unpleasant.. and that since you now find it unpleasant, there is some 'you' in there.. but you knew that already i suppose since you yourself said it's affective!

my mistake. it is easy to not read thoroughly due to carelessness.. another good reason for 'me' to disappear i suppose!

Beoman, I understand now; like I said, no worries.

So, guys, I figured this all out in an unlikely way, sort of similar to what beoman suggested (expose oneself to the stimulus and try to distinguish the actual aspect), albeit by accident.

Here's a music video:

Watch Natalie Merchant's head motion beginning at 0:59 (mute the sound if you like). The actual experience underlying the affective synaesthetic experiences of hearing (2a/2b) and feeling (1) that motion are like a rich-but-delicate multimodal chiaroscuro effect over the experience of visual motion (but not "in" the visual field and not easy to describe). The affective experiences, by contrast, are unsubtle and blocky, like the outlines in a children's coloring book.

Imagine that every single instance of attending to something moving produced this affective experience for you. Imagine that you had approached this for a long time believing that it was some kind of mind experience, and tried but failed to really grasp its nature. Imagine you suddenly realized that perhaps the actual object underlying those experiences was different from what you believed. You might post in this forum asking people to describe what their own experiences were like, to help you figure out what the case with yours was. Your post might even have this excited / agitated quality from the surprise of realizing that a large part of your moment-to-moment experience is something you may have been deeply misapprehending. What kind of response would be helpful? What kind would be unhelpful? Would you be surprised if you only got a few responses, despite the fact that it's so easy for anyone to test and describe their own experiences?

I'm sure it's true that most of the problem was a misunderstanding, especially because what I'm describing is atypical. Even so, that should give a bit of the flavor of why I was surprised at how this turned out.

I think I have some idea of the excited/agitated quality that that can produce, cause recently I wondered if certain things i were experiencing were actually cause of ADHD or OCD. i started re-thinking of my life up to this point in terms of those, and it started making a lot of sense, and really helped somewhat to deal with the phenomena that i now labeled 'OCD'. thinking about it in that way helped re-phrase it, which helped deal with it, blame myself less for it, etc. however, i think i also went over-board a bit, and caused some identifications with that, which caused me to be depressed, think that it was unfair, wonder how it would affect my practice/whether i'd be able to do it cause of these 'problems', etc... which in the end was also something that had to be dropped. i probably projected that onto your posts, so my initial replies were focusing more on the latter aspect (to not think of it as a 'problem') instead of the former (how to use the knowledge to help the practice).

anyway, all this is to just say that, it is good when clearer heads prevail, as seems to have happened here, and we should strive to be civil with each other and realize that we are only trying to help each other. because of the fallacies of 'being' on both sides, that trying to help might cause more suffering, in which case it's important to try to figure out why that is the case, on each side, since we are all in this for the end of suffering, though we might have differing opinions on what that is or how to get there or how to help others get there.

so - fun stuff! no worries =)

Did not read entire thread, but it could (I said COULD) be from active kundalini. With some people, certain channels are more open, with others, practice can trigger them. Usually meditation teachers are familiar with this and supply some kind of safety net. The easy diagnosis would be confirmed if you have out-of-body experiences, mood swings & shifts, and sexual drive that alternates without cause between weak and strong, etc. ,typical manfestations

synaesthesia is caused by the way neurotransmitters signal to the thalamus. From a practice point of view, it is all just "stuff" and there is more of that "stuff" as well so you acknowledge stuff as being stuff either way - unusual symptoms or side-effects not withstanding : )