Experience description:

2 experiences:

1. There was a time after having recently read Eben Alexander’s book Proof of Heaven; at the same time I was volunteering in Hospice care. A key point to this time was when I was at about this time 21/22 and I visited a patient who the nurses and my mom (her being a hospice nurse) they were pretty sure he was going to pass on —— and I like how they use that term fyi “passing on” — side tip sorry—. 

The man I was seeing wanted personally a volunteer to pray the rosary with him. And they couldn’t find anyone. So I didn’t really mind. I actually enjoyed it (it’s funny because I had to use my phone to find the luminary I believe -it was Thursday that day). And we finished, and he was an older Hispanic man, maybe early 80s. And then he started talking to what seemed to be his dead older brother — and the conversation they were having was set in the time period of the 1940s I believe, maybe war time stuff. But definitely his brother who it seemed to be must have seemed to the brother to be younger... so that sort of makes sense. What’s also important about this was that the man was looking above and actually conversing with something or someone above him, maybe a 120 degree angle as to imagine. 

A couple months after that time, I’d say about 4-6 months, I was in a really bad mental state. I was going off into the peace corps actually, and I was so scared and sad that at the time my older brother who is a 22 year brain cancer survivor and epileptic was going to have a seizure while I was gone and was going to seize more. 

Anyway, one time I was in my room, in a very depressed state, listening to depressing music, when suddenly it felt like. It’s very hard to explain, I also don’t know if I was a little bit high too from weed. I may have been. But after the experience I never touched it again. I threw it away.

It felt like I was touched somewhere inside of me, my body, sort of like maybe in my brain area. It felt like if a light were switched in your head but as if you could actually feel that. Like something actually physical touched me.

Essentially what I gained in that experience from that thing was that I am now grateful for my brother and his life. He is blind in one eye and can’t see peripherals in the other. So like seeing wise it’s very different for him. And I immediately walked downstairs to see my brother Daniel and for the first time in 22 years I actually asked him what it was like for him to have cancer, to see with a blind eye.

So that was that experience.

I have had an experience where I experienced what seemed to be my grandmother's presence in my dream. Never had I actually felt her like anyone else in a dream. That was after her death.

2) The second experience I have and one that keeps me who I am today — it’s very interesting — I am so shocked and surprised to see that mindfulness experiences as deep as I have had have been experienced and are on this page (your website Jody).

So I went to a Buddhist monastery for a month and a half in Missouri. I had been practicing meditation roughly 30 minutes or so a couple times a day for 6 months prior to this time (June 2015), where I primarily learned it through reading while in the peace corps and developing that practice. After I got back home (and this is the key point to put in that whatever I is does indeed not existence —- however, the language that we use has to be used in order for us all to communicate in this life... there is no other way we can communicate unless you just wanted to stay silent for the rest of your life. Sorry long tangent.

The meditation practice focused on the jhanas, these sort of experiences where you feel like energy rushing up into your head, a very pleasant energy. You then get to a point where all of your awareness immediately moves to your head area, and that’s all that’s there, just space. —-And this is where, just fyi, I think the lady who had my experience like me in your website I don’t know if she has had these experiences but maybe!——

After the awareness in the head, right so there’s no more body, just awareness in the head. After that you get to a state where you stop seeing your thoughts as your own, they’re just thoughts, but they’re not yours, they’re not antibody’s.

The next stage is deeper, u get into deeper energy levels here and throughout this whole time. Very very very deep meditation levels. At this point you should be about 2 hours meditating maybe if not more. These energies in your head, they’re so pleasant, but just let them come on their own— do not be selfish for the time pleasure they bring.

Eventually, and this time too, your breath will stop a little, maybe 15-20 seconds or more, maybe a minute. That’s like right when for me in the past awareness moved to the head immediately.

So back to the original point. You’re deep in your meditation now, just sitting on your chair, the energy levels climb. Pulses go throughout your body. The Buddha called this sensation Piti — also called for rapture, kind of like an orgasmish sense but better than any you could ever experience —not saying that I would condone that though.

The experience goes on your head, throughout your body, it’s some energy. Is it the kundalini awakening stuff? I see videos on jim Carey and he’s the only other person besides echkart tolle that I feel get what “I” mean.

After the experiences you have, so many of them, you’re getting deeper and deeper. And then eventually all thoughts stop. No thoughts are there. And then there comes a time where eventually there’s nothing. Just like... pretty much nothingness. It is very very very quiet. And u can do this any way - sitting, laying down, on a couch, in the car. It doesn’t matter. I got back into these states in 15 minute car breaks at work, and would walk into work one time I literally there was no me in that conscious. Me did not exist going back to work.

Keep with me. You’re having these experiences, you’re quiet and nothings happening. And then. The big O (don’t know what else to call it) happens. It’s like, you wake up but you know you weren’t asleep. And your thoughts are gone. They are literally stripped off from you. It’s like you took your brain of your head and put it on a platter and looked at it. Your brain having these thoughts come here and there and here and there. Lights. Etc etc. but you’re not the brain, you’re looking at it.

So that’s the experience. And the first time yes it is crazy. It will stay for at least a few days. Thoughts coming but no attachment. It’s not just an echkart tolle “‘oh I’m the watcher...’ ‘....okay what am I know’” sort of thing. It’s a full day, like days on. It is insane. Literally insane. I am no longer attached for since July/August of 2017. Like Jim Carey said, me too I am not a person.

The feelings are very similar to the kundalini awakening feelings, in the head, top of the head, down the spine, base of the spine. The feelings are great. And always welcomed. 

Now these feelings of piti or rapture come whenever I want them to. I just kind of tilt my eyes back a little with my eyes using them, and send this energy to the top of my brain. I’ll inhale usually more deeply.

Another important note, u don’t have to breathe through your nose to get this. I got this by breathing normally.

I forgot this part:

So I experienced the first awakening, they call it Sotapanna. And the monk told me. I didn’t know for 5 days lol... long story. Maybe 1 week later before I left I experienced it again... same thing. U just don’t NEED to be do anything, just do it. Like Jim Carey is, there is no doing, just happening. So that happened, it’s very like you’re present- super present. And in Buddhism they call it the Supra-mundane nibbana - it essentially the first stage of enlightenment - the second stage is u do it again. (Sakadagami). So I had that when I left. I was still myself at the time.

I was in and out of support groups, stopped meditating and got into 12 step groups. Every time I kneeled down on my knees I never connected to a Christian deity specifically but every time I got back into my meditation feelings. Immediately my thoughts became not my own. Like I was in the ignorance part again - the eighth arupa jhana - and the final barrier to understanding the four noble truths. But this was very short, but I knew it was right. So, hard to explain.

On a retreat back with my group in Big Bear. They had a meditation session. I didn’t want to do it but I had to, I couldn’t leave the meeting out of respect. 5 minutes. All it took for me was two and I got back to the feelings again.

Within a week I was back at meditating for hours on end, maybe not specifically but overall I mean, cumulatively. Easily go 30-45 minutes. Could do hours or more but then might sleep. I got back into it. I realized I didn’t need to breathe through my nose, I could breathe through my mouth. “My” “whatever” that needed to meditate didn’t exist. So naturally I breathe in my mouth instead. And I super rocketed to the third stage of enlightenment - anagami. I knew it was real, of course as that is a reality from the 1st stage — but the most important part for this one was that I already had been in support groups for members who deal with “lust” - I hope I don’t need to say more. So I pretty much knew already after that experience that I was no longer pretty much going to see women’s body parts as sex objects, or whatever, they are just what they are, a persons and an individual persons body that is theirs. 

Lastly, the last time. I meditated for a long time, in my living room. After work. During these times too I was trying to meditate more at work but only got 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. 

So I was in the living time. Another time u might notice that you’ve attained enlightenment or nibanna is that at the very end on stage 8 and kind of 6 & 7 too, you sort of move around and stuff. Like your body does what it does, on its own. So you might be like moving around, or jerking here and there for no reason. Because there is no you. It’s just your body! You get up! There it is! Nibanna! You do what you need to do now. There is no more self.

And so that was my fourth experience, although really I didn’t know at the time. I think it really fixed in (and this might be the fruition stage - I forgot to add where each enlightenment stage has 2 stages in each one - one is like u get it, the second one is the fruit, it is completed). Anyway, I was in work, back in my car and now man I was breezing through. I remember getting jhanas at work while I’m on my desk. This energy plop through my head, whatever it is.