[OM]
This resonates strongly with me, reminds me of you pointing out your asana practice helped you, changing your posture etc. The same for me, asana I needed first and for all to open up to the world. We need first and for all open our heart and body.The sitting practice came later. The meaninglessness of much wordly stuff is more easy to handle if we know we can stay aside, just observe it, not getting involved. Out of topic maybe, just an interesting observation. 
This is where I’m not quite following, Jim. Sadhana and silence will make you aware of it, whether you classify this ‘it’ as emotion or something else. Silence = Awareness, yes?
If yoga practice and the resulting silence/awareness won’t clear this ‘it’, then I really don’t know what will. Do you?
The first mistake is assuming that you and awareness are different things. If you are not awareness, then what's aware? How can something other than awareness be aware? The second mistake is the incorrect assumption that you are being "cleared" into a state of flawless perfection. It's a popular myth. The baggage you carry is a horrible burden. When you realize that you've been clutching it for no good reason, and simply let it go, the feeling is incredibly liberating and relieving. But you remain you, you keep doing the things you do, with the same preferences and inclinations....they're just not tightly clutched. If you've always been clumsy, you'll still drop things. If your focus tends to obsessively lock on this or that (so depression's been a problem), it will continue to do so, including the rumination of your own boundlessness. Focus can freeze, or it can move. It's a perennial choice, regardless of spiritual unfolding. If you settle into your boundlessness, perspective can freeze there, and frozen perspective triggers a depression reaction in the body, so you'll show all symptoms of depression - lethargy, numb inability to enjoy or to feel emotions, withdrawal, yet the entire time you'll have the sunniest of dispositions. Your body becomes depressed, but your mind is untouched. I'm notifying people caught in that position that this can happen, and why it happens. I wish it had been explained this way for me. Perspective moves when it's directed toward dynamic action. If you're lying on a couch dissolved in silence, perspective will freeze on that. But if you're out there jogging and talking and going to dinner parties and engaging with people, perspective will shift rather than freeze. Since it doesn't really matter either way - equanimity is experienced even while wasting away on a couch - it's strictly a matter of two alternatives. I'm explaining that there's a choice, and what to expect in both cases. And though I'm taking time to answer your questions, I wasn't aiming to help you establish your mental modeling of What This Is All About and How It All Works. Rather, this is for people who find themselves in this situation, so they don't need to spend a decade figuring out what the heck is going on, when the answer's actually quite simple.
You don’t “achieve” silence. You ARE silence, and always have been. You just remember to stop pretending that you’re not.
Same for everyone else. You don’t need to share with other people what they actually are.
I posted with a pragmatic purpose. At some point in the future, someone will read this and say “Oh, so THAT’S what’s been happening to me!”. That’s my sole purpose here. I’m not trying to “teach” anybody anything, just to explain a counterintuitive result to people mystified by that result. So forgive me for declining to engage in further wide-ranging spiritual discussion here. I’ve left a couple thousand postings in the past; they do a decent job of expressing my views of various aspects of all this, if anyone’s interested.
Jim,
Thank you for sharing your years of wisdom. Yogani has poured this wisdom in all his lessons and continues to do so. 
When people post in the forums, there is going to be interactions/ discussions. It’s a lovely divine interaction. 
I understand wanting to be pragmatic. But honestly if there is something I don’t want to discuss, I don’t post in the forums and let it go in silence.
Hi Jim, thank you for your reply. It’ok, I understand and respect the purpose behind your opening post.
Dread and doom were the first things I dropped now I only get angry at not finding my car keys blessings Jim
Just offering a different perspective which is not a yoga perspective. Take it or leave it if it doesn’t mean anything to you.
I see the world more in shades of emotion these days, we all have certain emotions that we don’t process/ digest as easily as others. These will be the ones that are more likely to surface when our energy moves/ oscillates into "the negative"harmonic.
Anyone can experience so called negative emotions it isn’t difficult, focus too much on yourself instead of others, bask unnaturally long in emotional highs (of any kind), by drawing in too much knowledge in a short time frame or bask in ecstasy or bliss, the negative emotional experience will be there as surely as the sunrise. There are some emotional harmonics we are more comfortable with, those are less likely to stick or surface for long. Eventually they all come and go more quickly, but will always be there in the colorful universe of duality. It isn’t personal, it’s just the law of the universe, nothing more.
The thoughts that we experience in any given moment and cluster to the emotions are meaningless other than they create the story giving our world context and so called meaning.
I think the comedian Louis CK said it well in one of his stand up shows when talking about masturbation, to paraphrase badly he said something along the lines of the most amazing euphoric high to complete self loathing and disgust, lol… and the elastic band snaps back to balance and stillness, beautiful.
Of course if there is resistance, then that is a whole other ball game and negative emotions can persist for amazingly long periods of time even if it’s subtle.
Pleasant words are like honeycomb ,sweetness to the soul and health to the bones Proverbs
Thankyou anthem [
@ Jim and his Karma
Hi Jim, I read your opening post many times; I came back to reread it again and again, but only yesterday, after reading a post of MrCuddly in another thread, I found out the question that was actually bothering me: do you think that this freezing/depression state will happen with ANY meditation method? Or do you think that some meditation methods will have a milder aftereffect (or even no effect at all) in terms of freezing/depression?
It’s not due to a particular method, or due to meditation at all. It’s a potential pitfall along the road for anyone once sustained bliss and silence are experienced.
It’s not necessary to fret or to take precautions. It’s sufficient to keep in the back of your mind a reminder that if you’re awash in bliss, and you’re not budging - appearing to all the world like a depressed person, but your sunny disposition and equanimity strike you as sufficient counter-evidence - consider that your perspective has simply gotten stuck. Your body can be depressed even if you’re not. Fixed perspective is problematic, even if you’re at a point where nothing’s a problem (and you needn’t resolve that paradox), and even if what you’re fixated on is supremely beautiful. So in that case: move. Engage. Take action. Ground. Play.
If it’s not something you’re experiencing, there’s nothing to worry about. This little posting is not for you. In any case, AYP’s frequent reminders to engage normally in the world should be sufficient, if you heed them. This is for non-heeders.
Hi Jim, thank you for your reply.
Are you really sure that such a freezing can happen with ANY kind of practice? I mean, maybe there are some approaches that tend to emphasize the blissful/silent state, making it difficult to fully engage in daily life. And maybe other approaches are more oriented toward a householder lifestyle. Or maybe one is at risk to simply chose an approach that is not the right one for him/her and develop detachment from daily life without even noticing it. In such a case, even the best reminders to stay active and engage in daily life can be easily ignored by the practitioner. I must admit that you scared me with this thread - although I am very grateful to you for that.
Bliss feels good. Anyone who has had a taste of it knows that. And silence is infinitely absorbing. And the conviction that all is well and nothing needs to change makes any position in any moment a position of sublime repose.
If you get stuck there - and why wouldn’t you? - the body you’re inhabiting will do what all bodies do when perspective freezes: it will fall into depression, even if mind is clear and blissful. It’s hard to understand what’s happening. So I’ve explained it.
I’m NOT here to discuss this, or warn about this, to those who are not in such a position. I’m leaving breadcrumbs for anyone who does, because it’s not information that can be found elsewhere. And I’ve now said all I care to.
This reminds me of what David Spero said about Samadhis:
:heart: :heart: :pray: :heart: :heart:
Hi Jean, This is very similar to what Yogani wrote in [lesson 274](http://www.aypsite.org/274.html): "By the way, neurobiologically speaking, the jivan mukti/Christ stage corresponds with the union of inner silence and ecstatic conductivity evolving up from everywhere in the body, reaching maturity in the head, and then migrating back down into the heart where the spiritual rebirth occurs. So the heart is where we will end up with all this. The heart is the final home of our enlightenment in this body, with the neurobiology of the whole body supporting that." [Yogani] With the right practices we do not need to enter a billion samadhis, or even a million for that matter. With dedicated practices, the heart will be brought into play sooner rather than later, and this has as much to do with being active during the day in service to others (Seva), as it does with being in samadhi during sitting practices. In the Bhagavad Gita it says that karma yoga, the yoga of action, is the highest form of yoga. This is why. Christi
What Christi said. 
Jim,
I just read through this thread. I’m a lurker on the forums. But I post every now and again. Been practicing ayp for about four years now and I know exactly what you speak of. I only wish you had posted it two or three years ago when I went through it. I had found estatic bliss and deep inner silence. Nothing could touch me, not poverty, not pain, not even the little hiccups of everyday life. Yet my body was depressed, everyone around me knew it but me. I was so fixated on the silence and bliss that I disregarded the advice to actively engage in daily life and just surrendered to that silence. Doing that nearly cost me my marriage. I am not sure how but at one point I remember seeing how sad my wife had become at my detachment. That began a long process of pulling me back into daily life. I stopped all yoga practices and began only doing small prayers and light meditations and started to become more involved in my own life. Interestingly enough getting into ceremonial magic helped to refocus me back into daily life as the focus there was on this world and not on the next, so I began working horizontally instead of vertically, forcing me to consider the life in front of me instead of numbly watching it. Not that I advise anyone else to do that, that’s just where my inner guru lead me and it worked out for me really well. In any case I am glad you are sharing this advice. I am not sure if I would have heeded it when I was in that condition, but it may help others.