A friend from Mongolia needs advise :)

Greetings to all the fellow travelers on the journey home! First of all I will introduce myself and my story as briefly as possible followed by my questions.
My name is Sanchir and I'm from Mongolia, as you can see English is not my first language so please try to bear with my many mistakes. I'm 29 y/o living with my wife and 2 kids. Since the time I joined KFD last November I've been browsing KFD and reading quite a lot I also own the MCTB. But for many unmentionable reasons I've been unable to practice any kind of meditations since few days ago, when I've finally decided to start practicing meditation.

To clarify things a little more as to why I got into Buddhism and provide a little background story, born from an atheist family I was the only one who was interested in spirituality. As far as I can remember I always wanted to know the meaning to our existence which made me a very curious individual with a hunger for knowledge. Since I was a kid I started to study as much as I can about most of the major science fields and later began to learn about the many religions of the world. However nothing special happened to me until about 4 years ago. By the way I did my bachelor in computer science and last year got my M.Eng in educational technologies in Japan.

So everything started when I moved to Tokyo in April 2008 where on my first night I got 'visited' by a pack of wolves, they literally came through the window of my 9th floor dorm room. There were about 7, 8 gray and some white wolves, then the alpha male climbed on top of me and put the front 2 paws on my chest looked straight at my face from a distance of about ~10 inches and I believe tried to communicate a message to me which I unfortunately didn't understand. But I'm pretty sure I wasn't sleeping as I was fully aware of my surroundings and even saw when they flew back out the window. I never had a lucid dream before then, although had many vivid dreams about flying etc.

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I wasn't scared at all, was only very curious.

Since then many strange things started happening which totally changed my life. Some of the things worth mentioning are I started to have really vivid and wild dreams with tornados, cyclones and earthquakes i.e. mother nature wreaking havoc and in 1 notable dream there were a river composed of snakes and rain with black cats, I also started having lot of vibrations all over my body mostly when I wake up in the morning and sometimes during day naps which led to lucid dreams and OBEs quite frequently. Because of this sudden change in my life further burdened with my study I became a total mess both psychologically and neurologically. My health deteriorated rapidly and I lost ~50 pounds in 2-3 months. I experienced all kinds of symptoms with a lot of pains everywhere and many anxiety attacks. It was definitely an information overload in a very short time span.

Many things happened since then but I still managed to get my M.Eng and returned home October 2011 in one piece . During this crazy period I started learning about astral projection and OBEs mostly from Robert A. Monroe's travel logs and books which were similar to my experiences. Then one day stumbled across Daniel Ingram's website where I learned about hardcore dharma which made a lot of sense to me specially after reading MCTB, before then Buddhism didn't make much sense to me as well as most of the other religions. Since I'm a very skeptical person I always try to look at things from all possible angle but everything seemed to fit (my search for meaning of life) into place after I learned Buddhism from a more practical and pragmatic point of view without any dogmas.

Now to my questions which I have tons and tons of, but will try to list the most important ones. First the general questions:
1. Does anyone here have similar experience with astral projections and OBE prior to or after getting into Buddhism?

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2. Since I want to understand the relationship between the many strange animal, natural disaster dreams I had and the final ultimate purpose of my life (nirvana), can anyone provide me with insights or advise on this? Any kind of advice or idea would be greatly appreciated.

I forgot to mention about the recent booming of shamanism in my country starting 8-9 years ago, currently there are some estimated ~50,000 shamans in a country with only 2.7 million people (10 years ago there were probably less than 100, no one knows the reason for this sudden increase but the shamans themselves say it is because the earth is becoming too defiled and polluted that our ancestors are coming to warn about it. Shaman in my country is quite different from most of the other traditions, key difference is that during the trance the shaman's ancestor comes and possesses the shaman).

Strangely perhaps even ironically my best friend became a shaman about the same time I had the wolf incident about 4 years ago. Recently when I went to ask him about my situation from his ancestor while he was in trance, the old man said I was reincarnation of someone who had attained the paths in previous life and said I need to search for the truth within myself. This is one of the main reasons I decided to start practicing meditation. I know all of this information must be quite confusing or maybe even sound ridiculous but this is the truth also the reason I'm writing this is that I thought it might be interesting to some to share this info.

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Now for the questions regarding actual practices:
(As I've mentioned I've read the MCTB and many posts here and became quite familiar with most of the terminologies including the 3 gear method. So far I've tried to meditate about 6, 7 times in total each about 1 hour. And I'm doing noting practice with emphasis on following the breath movement.)

1. But I'm still not sure where in the map I'm currently at. Although it seems I can access 'access concentration' pretty easily maybe after 5min of sitting. I'm not even sure if it is the access concentration it could be Samatha Jhana 1 or even the A&P. What happens is that when I start to concentrate on my breath and start to note the other sensations and emotions that arise, my ear kind of has the feeling 'similar to the moment when they pressurize the cabin in an airplane' and then I become very calm and feel very unitive also have wide space kind of feeling. What could this be?

2. Also not long after I start my noting practices I get this really intense itching mostly on my face when I keep noting it I can feel it spreading over wider area while becoming less intense but at the same time becomes tingly like tiny vibrations. (Sometimes I can't bear it and end up scratching it ). What could this be? My guess is that it could be the 3 nana or maybe the dukkha nanas?

3. 2 nights ago while I was doing noting before going to bed towards the end of the 1 hour sit while I was battling with my itching I had this incredible burst of energy (Goosebumps feeling) from my chest area which spread and engulfed my whole body, and all of my itching mostly disappeared. I became really calm and stopped my noting because of this intense feeling and just started observing my body. Could this be the A&P? I'm still not sure because I don't think I notice the arising and passing of the sensation maybe it could be because I stopped paying attention to any particular area..

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4. One other thing worth mentioning is that I have this little 'ability' to produce Goosebumps (energetic feeling that starts from my head and runs down my whole body) at my will anytime since I was a kid. This is the reason I get confused when impermanence is mentioned because I somehow know that my body is not solid since I was a kid. So I don't know where to look for when people talk about arising and passing of sensations. Should I try to look at each sensation's vibration or just the feeling when I notice the sensations?

5. Can anyone tell me if this itching is the dukkha nanas or the 3rd nana? Also if possible try to put my progress somewhere on the insight map?

There are many other questions that I want to ask and I'm planning to start a thread about my practice sessions here to get the advice from everyone. Whew that was one heck of a long post! Would like to mention thank you (and sorry for the long blabber) to everyone who managed to read it all and (I have to say I'm still battling with my illnesses which I believe can be healed if I can find liberation.) I would be grateful beyond words to those who could provide me any kind of assistance.

May everyone find liberation.
Sanchir

Welcome onboard, Sanchir and thank you for a thorough introduction

I would suggest that you start a practice thread describing phenomenologically the contents of your sits. I doubt anyone would try to place you on the map without first seeing how your practice evolves over time. Dharma diagnosing is more about chronology than single isolated incidents.

Hoping to read more about your practice soon,
Antero

Thank you for the reply Antero I'm thinking about starting a thread and will post my sitting experience (but will try to focus on writing if anything strange happens another words not every day practice). But I will be really glad if you or anyone else can answer some of my questions which I wrote about some of my sitting experiences like the itching and the "access concentration" related ones.

Thank you again!
Sanchir

I think Antero is right that it is quite hard to guess about maps when a person only reports some experiences and you don't see the day to day part of their meditation over time. So if your practice thread includes the day to day practice, it will become easier to identify what's going on. If you only report the strange things, it is much harder. The strange things are more memorable and exciting, but in a way not as important as the day to day practice. The energy stuff can happen at different times for different people (and some people have almost no energy stuff, even while they make progress in insight), so it's not always a good indicator of progress.

Ok I understand thank you both for the advise I will then start my practice thread and will try to post all of my sits not just the strange stuff

Sanchir