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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 18 2005 : 01:15:31 AM
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Just added samyama. It's like enjoying nine exquisitely and luxuriously delicious different chocolates one at a time, each of which explodes you in a different place.
Siddhis shmiddhis. I don't care if I actually GET wise, light, strong, etc. I don't care about much of anything. I just want to be done by this samyama twice per day. Walking on water wouldn't come close to competing with just what the practice FEELS like. In fact, if someone instantly gave me the gift of, say, telepathy and told me that if I worked diligently with it for ten years, I would, at the end, attain this level of ecstacy, I'd eagerly get to work. The prize comes with the first bite of Crackerjack. It's gleefully backwards. In fact, I couldn't stop giggling at this perversity for a while.
I thought my ecstacy level was maxxed out before. I was wrong. Life just got a lot better.
Maybe I'll start cutting my frenum after all... |
Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Jul 18 2005 11:49:34 AM |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 18 2005 : 01:22:24 AM
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p.s. it's still roiling inside, pervading, tickling. So let me amend that to: nine exquisitely and luxuriously delicious different chocolates whose flavors never completely dissipate.
I know meditation's the main thing, but, sorry, I've just got to think of that from now on mostly as preparation for samyama.
Also I finally got the foot tingling Yogani talks about a lot. Was wondering when that would show up.... |
Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Jul 18 2005 01:24:31 AM |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 18 2005 : 5:40:00 PM
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Yawns are good! A sign of opening! Just don't let your mind trick you into thinking that after the yawn you've got to "get back to where you were." I fell in that trap for a long time (especially after distractions in meditation). You're NEVER far away from ANYTHING!
As for slow-pokes, I'm not up to yoni mudra yet!!!
quote:
Originally posted by Melissa
Holy Moses Jim! You make me want to get there in a flash. Not quite to that point yet though . . . . Still dealing with the yawns in yoni mudra . . . . Guess I'll have to settle for nine gourmet chocolates [dark, of course!] until then!
Congrats and thanks for sharing. It gives us slow pokes something to look forward to!
Blessings,
Melissa
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 18 2005 : 10:24:55 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Melissa
Yeah, but can I still indulge in the nine gourmet chocolates? I mean a girl's gotta have ~some~ fun! 
Yogani says the only prerequisite for samyana is having attained some stillness. Like a lot of things, if you have to wonder whether you've attained some stillness, it means you probably haven't :)
But if you have, go for it! Just remember to self pace...don't pile on too many practices at once, and don't add anything unless you're fairly stable in your practices and your passage through the world.
If I can inject a little pointer...learning to let the mantra get subtle is a good way to prepare for samyama. That is, try to relax a little if you're mentally intoning "I AM! I AM!" with great deliberation. Let the mantra get small and sweet and subtle if that's what it wants to do (don't force it to do that or anything else...just let it if it wants to). If you're at the stage of frequently dropping mantra when thoughts distract and then returning to it....congratulations, you're enjoying the very best part and making the most progress of all....but it's not time to add samyama or to think about mantra subtlety. Just keep on with the simple but delicious practice of calmly coming back to mantra again and again. When it's time to refine, you'll know!
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Manipura
USA
870 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2005 : 1:34:39 PM
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Jim - I have enjoyed reading your posts - your insights are helpful to me. This may seem like a naive question, but I am sincere:
How DO I know if I've attained some stillness in meditation?
I am experiencing a variety of things (kriyas, lights, sensations of energy moving in my body), but know not to get too attached to any of that stuff. But for all that, I cannot seem to do the simplest thing possible, which is to quiet my mind. My husband tells me I'm trying too hard, which may be the case, but even when I relax my mind, I am not aware of much, if any, stillness. I sense that I need this stillness in place before I can go much further in my practice. Any thoughts or suggestion would be appreciated!
BTW, your enthusiasm regarding samyama made me jump ahead in Yogani's book, just so I could read about the 9 chocolates. Way too soon for me to try that, but it gives me something else to look forward to.
warmly
meg
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riptiz
United Kingdom
741 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2005 : 6:47:43 PM
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Hi Meg,
Don't be confused by expectations of what experiences should consist of.If you are gently chanting the mantra without forced concentration then you are probably using correct technique.All meditations are different even if they appear the same and each one is correct for you.If you are expereiencing thoughts (which are signs of cleansing) then that is correct just as deep meditation is .
L&L
dave
'the mind can see further than the eyes' |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2005 : 10:04:01 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by meg
How DO I know if I've attained some stillness in meditation?
Meg, you're gonna HATE this answer...but: you'll know.
The big transitions: awakening of kundalini and attainment of stillness (and, they say, enlightenment itself) are revelatory. You won't mistake them. It's an "ohhhhh...ok, THIS is what they mean" type of thing, like your first orgasm or the first time you got drunk, or your first astral projection to the rings of Saturn. Y'know?
As for pointers...just keep doing what you're doing. Don't aim for anything or try to go anywhere. Let loose and let go (of all but mantra). Also could try doing some light asanas before meditation, to calm and center yourself...that's a leg up (pun unintended).
J&K |
Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Jul 19 2005 10:52:52 PM |
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yogani
USA
5195 Posts |
Posted - Jul 20 2005 : 1:35:59 PM
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It only takes a little inner silence to begin to gain some benefit from samyama practice. In the AYP lessons we can leap-frog to samyama as soon as we feel we are ready. See the recent lesson on this at http://www.aypsite.org/269.html
Leap-frogging is not recommended for any other practice in AYP. But for samyama, it can serve us well if we have some inner silence coming up.
How do we know if we have some inner silence? If we find the mantra fading naturally and we are picking it up at very refined and fuzzy levels when we go back to it, then that is inner silence. That is also where we do samyama, at that fuzzy level on the edge of no thoughts at all. It is very simple. It is usually easy to notice if we are picking up the mantra at a refined level. We cannot force this to happen. It happens according to ongoing purification. It will not be refined like that all the time either. It depends on what purification is going on in our nervous system at the moment. If it is refined like that from time to time, then we can benefit from samyama. In fact, samyama will improve our ability to pick up the mantra deep in the mind.
So, if we are having that experience of fuzzy mantra fading away, then samyama will not be a waste of time. If we start too early with samyama, we will not do ourselves any harm either. As always, it is up to you. Here it is: http://www.aypsite.org/150.html Make sure to read the lessons before and after too, so you will get the whole picture.
The guru is in you.
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 20 2005 : 3:53:25 PM
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>>It only takes a little inner silence to begin to gain some benefit from samyama practice.
Thanks for clarifying, Yogani. But, FWIW, I'm glad I waited. Not that I'm any kind of master of deep stillness yet, but I doubt samyama would have felt quite so delicious if there wasn't a relatively still pool for it. Everyone's different, of course!
Also I'd like to remind everyone that while you can leapfrog INTO samyama even fairly early, you do need to wait a while before adding other things on afterward, just as with any new practice. |
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yogani
USA
5195 Posts |
Posted - Jul 20 2005 : 7:51:39 PM
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Thanks, Jim.
Yes, it takes time to undertake all these practices, and jumping the gun on next steps will give us symptomatic feedback from within pretty soon. We will be wise to pace ourselves accordingly, allowing weeks, months or longer between forays into new practices, giving adequate time to acclimate to the one we last took on, like samyama in this case.
With all these powerful practices lined up in a row in the AYP lessons, we have all but eliminated the age-old problem of finding them. Now we are limited only by our capacity to absorb them smoothly and safely with the accelerated purification in the nervous system they cultivate. We are all different in this, so it becomes a matter of personal management, which we call "self-pacing" in the lessons.
With the practices readily available, self-pacing becomes a huge deal. As important as any practice -- maybe more important, because, if we can't build our daily routine in an orderly fashion we will not be able to continue steadily toward our enlightenment. Given the crucial role of self-pacing in AYP, a whole forum is devoted to it here. See http://www.aypsite.org/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=18
In that forum, we can look at self-pacing from many angles with lots of feedback from practitioners. It is in the Q&As of the AYP lessons quite a lot already. See "self-pacing" in the topic index at http://www.aypsite.org/TopicIndex.html for links to many case study lessons on self-pacing. There is much more we can discuss on this.
The guru is in you. |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 21 2005 : 03:00:36 AM
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Interesting. Much as the body needs to learn to accommodate higher energy, perhaps it also needs to learn to accommodate greater subtlety! That's what a tickle is...an ambivalent reaction to subtlety (your feet don't get tickled by someone grabbing them...only by very light, cagey touch!).
Submit to the tickle. Let go to the tickle, just as you're suggested to let go in meditation. Let it get so subtle it disappears. Don't grasp.
quote:
Originally posted by Melissa
Okay guys, I did it. I haven't really felt much ecstacy before because I've mostly been dealing with the yawns. Arrrgh!
Tonight when I tried samyama . . . . I don't know . . . . it tickled. That is the best way I know how to describe it. It felt nice but also hard to stay in because I could barely stand it, like I kept wanting to scratch or something but it didn't really itch, just tickled. Now I really think I'm losing it! I guess we'll see where this leads . . . .
Melissa
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 22 2005 : 5:13:33 PM
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Update....
"Chocolates" wasn't quite right. They're each bells, tuned differently, and getting fainter and more beautiful and harmonious together as they recede (first as I let each samyama recede and grow dilute, and later as the practice session recedes and grows dilute).
Also...
It seems to be all about the fade-down. The reason silence is a prerequisite for this practice is that you can't stay with the fade down if your mind's distracting you (and as the fade gets quieter and quieter, there's more "vacuum" for thoughts to enter). The longer and clearer you can stay alert with the long decrescendo of each samyama, the more powerful the practice.
I'm able to focus on the decrescendo for an unusually long time (partially because I've attaned some silence, but partially because I'm a wine buff, accustomed to staying alert and passionately immersed during long, slow fades...and I'm 100% serious about this).
The upshot is that while AYP suggests 15 secs for each round of each term, I'm nowhere near through the "finish" or "aftertaste" of the term in 15 secs. More like a full minute. Actually, the samyama practice is quite considerate. When the fade has gone beyond my capacity to follow, and my inner energies have finished deliciously adjusting themselves to each term, there's always an energetic intermission, as if to nudge me toward "Next!".
So that's what I'm doing. I don't feel compelled to ask Yogani if this is ok, because my inner guru is winking and giving me the "OK!" sign. ;)
J&K |
Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Jul 22 2005 5:14:40 PM |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 22 2005 : 10:58:24 PM
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Yep, that's it. All right!
Look, if you want to mix 'n match practices, that's totally up to you. But at least I'd suggest separating them. e.g. if you're going to skip your I Am meditation practice for one slot, don't piggyback samyama on top of something else.
Or...hey, go ahead, if you're adventurous. Shoot, that's how Yogani integrated all this, by trying stuff. But if you go that route, you'll have to be self-resourceful if/when things don't go smoothly, because you're off the path, as it were. A few thousand people have tried this practice (more or less as directed), so we pretty well know what to expect from that. By contrast, it's safe to say that less than a dozen people in history have likely followed up "Earth Peace Meditation" with samyama. I'm not going to say your head's going to explode, but none of AYP is mamby pamby weekend spiritual workshop stuff, and it's a mistake to underestimate the extent to which we are all adventure traveling with all this (not a junket to Cancun, this is Everest base camp). |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 22 2005 : 11:20:38 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Jim and His Karma
Yep, bingo. That's it!
I'm kind of sorry Yogani mentioned the hopping/floating effect of akasha. I keep catching myself watching for it, alas. Consider joining me in not expecting concrete result. Detach from that entirely. Samyama is all about detachment anyway. And, as you're starting to see, if you can do a really detached, really pure and smooth samyama, the internal effect is better than levitation or whatever anyway. Remember my wine tasting image...you may find it helpful in going even subtler (without the tickle!).
Re: the earth peace thingee...if you want to mix 'n match practices, that's totally up to you. But at least I'd suggest separating them. E.g. if you're going to skip your I Am meditation practice for one slot, don't piggyback samyama on top of some other thing.
Or...hey, go ahead, if you're adventurous. Shoot, that's how Yogani integrated all this, by trying stuff. But if you go that trail/error route, you'll have to be self-resourceful if things don't go smoothly, because you're off the path, as it were. A few thousand people have tried this practice (more or less as directed), so we pretty well know what to expect from it. By contrast, you may well be the first person in history to have followed up "Earth Peace Meditation" with this particular samyama practice. I'm not going to say your head's going to explode, but none of AYP is mamby pamby weekend spiritual workshop stuff, and it's a mistake to underestimate the extent to which we are all adventure traveling with all this. It's not a junket to Cancun; this is Everest base camp!
Sorry, not trying to be the AYP Nazi, it's just that I think this needs to be reminded, especially for those reading along! :)
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - Jul 23 2005 : 09:40:36 AM
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Hello Melissa,
I was able to read that you weren't mixing your practices. Jim can be busy (all that Karma, y'know) and sometimes his mind moves faster than his reading. On the bright side, good instructions are usually left behind, though sometimes for someone else!! 
One other thing (and I'm NOT saying you are doing this), we all agree that experimentation is a good thing, but I might suggest as a general rule that people don't do any experimentation at all until they are well out of the 'clunky' beginning stages of any practice.
Blessings,
-David
quote:
Originally posted by Melissa
No, I was trying to clarify that I was not / do not mix practices! <SNIP> Have I been exonerated now?
Melissa
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Jul 23 2005 : 12:39:19 PM
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Melissa, apologies...I did read quickly (no choice (David's right; hanging out in AYP forum is one of the micro breaks I cram into a 15 hr work day, so my choice is to use this forum hastily or not at all). But I read slowly through the samyama description, which was dynamite!
quote:
Originally posted by david_obsidian
Hello Melissa,
I was able to read that you weren't mixing your practices. Jim can be busy (all that Karma, y'know) and sometimes his mind moves faster than his reading. On the bright side, good instructions are usually left behind, though sometimes for someone else!!
One other thing (and I'm NOT saying you are doing this), we all agree that experimentation is a good thing, but I might suggest as a general rule that people don't do any experimentation at all until they are well out of the 'clunky' beginning stages of any practice.
Blessings,
-David
quote:
Originally posted by Melissa
No, I was trying to clarify that I was not / do not mix practices! <SNIP> Have I been exonerated now?
Melissa
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rabar
USA
64 Posts |
Posted - Aug 01 2005 : 2:54:10 PM
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Jim & His Karma write:
"Yogani says the only prerequisite for samyana is having attained some stillness. Like a lot of things, if you have to wonder whether you've attained some stillness, it means you probably haven't."
The litmus test for stillness I use is whether I can feel my heartbeat pulsing throughout my chest - or even better, throughout my body. I guess I sort of 'cheat' a little at the
beginning, because I start in kumbhaka at the end of the inhale, 'snag' the stillness place
with a brief effort, and then relax on the exhale, holding on to that stillness place. By
then I can feel my pulse in my chest, and just use it as the 'wave' for the samyama surfboard
to ride. There's a sort of 'right position' on the wave, and surfing is a good metaphor for me because the position seems to be just ahead of the crest of the relaxed breath, sort of leaning one-half second into the NOW. That seems the appropriate time lag between the pure perception and our self-referencing process according to several things I've read. A couple of quotes from my notebook:
"In neurological terms, the Now is governed by a temporal coherence function spanning about three seconds: "the three second consciousness" (Poppel).
Reading Amit Goswami's "The Self-Aware Universe," I was struck by something he said about the half-second time lag between our conscious experience of something and our secondary awareness arising (verbal thought) with which comes "the arising of the ego-self/I-am-this" type of introspection. Quoting:
"Our preoccupation with the secondary processes (indicated by the time lag) makes it difficult to be aware of our quantum self and to experience the pure mental states that are accessible at the quantum level of our operation. Many meditation practices are intended to eliminate the time lag and to put us directly in touch with these pure mental states in their suchness (tathagata in Sanskrit). Evidence (albeit tentative) shows that meditation reduces the time lag between the primary and the secondary processes."
(end quote)
Somewhere I read about a brain specialist who was able to measure this time-lag while doing open-brain surgery, and it measured at a half-second. So I try to 'lean' a half-second forward on my wave-riding.
Ive always pondered the 'width' of the NOW, knowing that Nature's NOW exists ahead of our
human's, and that the further ahead of our thought process we can position ourselves the better off we are.
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Aug 01 2005 : 9:20:54 PM
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Wow, it sounds like you're onto something there!
quote:
Originally posted by rabar
Jim & His Karma write:
"Yogani says the only prerequisite for samyana is having attained some stillness. Like a lot of things, if you have to wonder whether you've attained some stillness, it means you probably haven't."
The litmus test for stillness I use is whether I can feel my heartbeat pulsing throughout my chest - or even better, throughout my body. I guess I sort of 'cheat' a little at the
beginning, because I start in kumbhaka at the end of the inhale, 'snag' the stillness place
with a brief effort, and then relax on the exhale, holding on to that stillness place. By
then I can feel my pulse in my chest, and just use it as the 'wave' for the samyama surfboard
to ride. There's a sort of 'right position' on the wave, and surfing is a good metaphor for me because the position seems to be just ahead of the crest of the relaxed breath, sort of leaning one-half second into the NOW. That seems the appropriate time lag between the pure perception and our self-referencing process according to several things I've read. A couple of quotes from my notebook:
"In neurological terms, the Now is governed by a temporal coherence function spanning about three seconds: "the three second consciousness" (Poppel).
Reading Amit Goswami's "The Self-Aware Universe," I was struck by something he said about the half-second time lag between our conscious experience of something and our secondary awareness arising (verbal thought) with which comes "the arising of the ego-self/I-am-this" type of introspection. Quoting:
"Our preoccupation with the secondary processes (indicated by the time lag) makes it difficult to be aware of our quantum self and to experience the pure mental states that are accessible at the quantum level of our operation. Many meditation practices are intended to eliminate the time lag and to put us directly in touch with these pure mental states in their suchness (tathagata in Sanskrit). Evidence (albeit tentative) shows that meditation reduces the time lag between the primary and the secondary processes."
(end quote)
Somewhere I read about a brain specialist who was able to measure this time-lag while doing open-brain surgery, and it measured at a half-second. So I try to 'lean' a half-second forward on my wave-riding.
Ive always pondered the 'width' of the NOW, knowing that Nature's NOW exists ahead of our
human's, and that the further ahead of our thought process we can position ourselves the better off we are.
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - Aug 01 2005 : 9:27:07 PM
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Hello Ramon,
I'm interested in what you are saying, but I can't quite follow it -- how does one lean one half-second into the NOW? (I know it is figurative, but I still don't get the picture).
Thanks,
-David
quote:
Originally posted by rabar
By
then I can feel my pulse in my chest, and just use it as the 'wave' for the samyama surfboard
to ride. There's a sort of 'right position' on the wave, and surfing is a good metaphor for me because the position seems to be just ahead of the crest of the relaxed breath, sort of leaning one-half second into the NOW.
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rabar
USA
64 Posts |
Posted - Aug 03 2005 : 03:26:28 AM
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Sorry that I didn't make myself clearer, david_o, although it's hard to describe a pre-verbal state verbally (smile)... I think you know where it is, that place of immaculate perception, but maybe just haven't thought about it in those terms. Tilopa's "Song of the Mahamudra" is a supreme attempt. Two translations:
http://www.allspirit.co.uk/mahamudra.html
and
http://www.keithdowman.net/mahamudra/tilopa.htm
I include two translation links because each has something to offer. The second includes a better description of the Tibetan exercise of blue-sky-watching, which triggers the so-called Ganzfeld 'white-out' effect. Quote:
Gazing intently into the empty sky, vision ceases;
Likewise, when mind gazes into mind itself,
The train of discursive and conceptual thought ends
And supreme enlightenment is gained.
For more about the Ganzfeld Effect and how to experience it with the aid of two ping-pong
balls cut in half (I say two in order to avoid the trademark stamped on them), see:
http://brain.web-us.com/ganzfeld.htm
The "leaning' image comes from the surfboard metaphor, and I retard the relaxed breath one-half second (or perhaps less?) because the moment the breath is slowed, the mind observes it with interest, as if saying to itself, "Oh, something is happening to the breath. I should watch it," thus gluing the mind to the breath, so to speak. It does seem paradoxical that a half-second 'retard' of the breath should lean one forward more into the Now, but isn't that what Vipassana claims to do? I'm also wondering if it increases carbon dioxide levels in the same manner that breath retention does, and whether these increased levels also play a role. Someone wrote me just yesterday about a certain hypoventilation technique invented by a Russian Dr. Buteyko who claims to have cured thousands of ill people by teaching 'shallow breathing.' See:
http://www.buteyko.co.nz/buteyko/media/story11.cfm
Also
http://www.normalbreathing.com/Book1Ch1.html (which I have yet to read(
All this hypoventilation material is brand-new to me, so I really cannot comment further.
I've experimented with hypoventilation as a method to stay warm in cold weather, and was able to drip with sweat standing naked outdoors in 45-degree weather - not much compared to the Tibetan 'tumo' practitioners, but at least I could see where they might be heading.
Hope this clarifies! Thanks for asking. |
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Oct 29 2005 : 9:58:38 PM
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I'm glad to find it's OK to leapfrog into the Samyama. I've only been doing the practices for a month or so, and haven't really experienced any of the pleasurable experiences you guys (or y'all) talk about. But Samyama is perfect for me because I have plenty of inner silence. I learned to stop my thoughts long ago when I was into Castaneda books, but never found any use for it except to reduce stress (which is awesome in itself). I've been doing SRF meditation for a year with not much result except stress reduction and relaxation. But right as soon as I began Yogani's style of pranayama followed by mantra meditation, I felt a profound deep silence every time that I had only achieved occasionally after long, deep meditations. And now I reach it in a half hour every time.
Afterword i feel like i don't need anything, and don't have any problems, for hours. This is great stuff!
Etherfish |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Oct 30 2005 : 7:29:03 PM
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But...careful. If it's pleasure you seek, the mind will find you pleasure. Any goal you have might, if you're very unlucky, be attained.
For this one aspect of your life, drop ALL goal-oriented thinking. Do the practices because they feel deeply right, because you know deep down that it's what you must do. Period. If you do them to feel great, become less neurotic, turn into a great enlightened master who everyone will love, or to pick up chicks, you'll get nowhere in the long run. It'll be as spiritually useful as learning French or horseback riding.
Follow your bhakti. That's all you need. If pleasure comes, that's nice. If not, that's nice, too. |
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First Time at Samyama
