Today I took a vacation from going deep in meditation. I decided to forego the bliss and opening. I chose not to try to open my heart. I let go of letting go.
I didn’t do any of the hundred little things I’ve figured out will take me further faster. For example, I didn’t tilt my head back to enhance the feeling of flow and I didn’t think this or breathe that or place my attention here or there at the usual junctures, as if following a treasure map - a breadcrumb trail left for myself on prior “journeys”.
I didn’t aim for the feeling of my cells being used by a higher power for a higher purpose. I made no deity the gift of my soul. I thought no deep thoughts. I didn’t push myself deeper, deeper, deeper.
I took a vacation from all that. I simply sat down and said “I am” to myself over and over, expecting no result at all. I switched from my usual terribly advanced meditation to a novice meditation. And I maintained the simplicity through tremendous flows of energy and lord knows what else - hey, I wasn’t paying attention, my mind was absorbed with “I am”, come what may.
Needless to say, I’ve never felt more at peace and refreshed and smooth in my entire life.
[quote]
I took a vacation from all that. I simply sat down and said “I am” to myself over and over, expecting no result at all.
[/quote]Hi Jim,
This is great to hear, with better results from more simplicity. It seems to me that this is the recommended way of doing AYP meditation, so why not continue like this instead of just having it as a vacation?
Don’t mind if I do!
Jim wrote:
This sounds familiar to me…this is how I perceive meditation. In addition; (or rather: “in subtraction”) I have been on vacation for nine days. Familiy, dog, cabin, nature. No electricity, no in door water - a lot of space to amplify all that takes place in my mind. Nowhere to run…
I’ll post later on some of what I go through.
May all your Nows be Here
I am with Katrine on this one… my meditation is just sitting with “i am”… unlike katrine though not much happens to me during meditation… just mantra and thoughts and sleep… and Jim you taught me this… you always said… keep it simple… let all expectations go… just “i am”… so where did all this, " tilt your head and work on your heart and feeling the cells and deity gift of the soul", come from?
Excellent question, Shanti.
The answer is this: it can always be stripped down and simplified. The unfoldment of greater simplicity goes hand in hand with the unfoldment of greater conductivity. I’m still not meditating as simply as I think I am - and neither are you. Later, we’ll notice the complications we’re currently bringing to our practice. The things I’m describing above are tiny. And I didn’t fully realize I was doing them. I’ve surely got even tinier things I’m doing. Ways I’m controlling. Manners in which I’m pushing and striving.
You don’t realize how blocked you are until the blocks are smoothed out. You don’t realize how hard you’re hanging on until you let go. You don’t realize that (as Yogani wisely said once) trying to let go can be a holding on. The mind keeps complicating things, and our ability to notice this with the mind is limited. All we can do is return to simplicity and let ourselves be meditated and simply opt out of the house of mirrors.
I’m dropping my beloved “tooth brushing” analogy. That’s not quite it. What it ought to be like, I’m realizing, is like having your hair cut.
Shanti wrote:
Well…except for the ecstatic conductivity, nothing happens during meditation for me either. That is why I like it so much. It is complete rest. I don’t have to expect anything…the meditation is enough. Being is enough.
However; between meditations…oh boy. I am in the middle of a shift. In the course of letting go of my resistance to truth, all of me is falling apart (which is the whole point of the Work)…and falling fast. I have seen too much now…I am seeing through my own lies all over the place. Good riddance. But it takes all my courage to be with it. To be…and not act in panic.
May all your Nows be Here
To comment on the same quote Katrine selected, if you’re expecting/hoping something to happen during meditation, that’s a complication, too. Just keep cutting them away, as if with a machete. No, don’t even do that. The cutting away is just another complication. Just opt out and let yourself be meditated!
Jim wrote:
Which hair? 
Personally ( ) I feel meditation to be like relaxing into a bath.
May all your Nows be Here
We posted at the same time, Jim 
laughing and laughing
Jim…I am dying to meet you!!
Isn’t it impossible to tell how to do nothing… 
May all your Nows be Here
For me it seems much easier to me now than when I started an year back. I am going much deeper. I dont have any escatic conductivity yet or lights. But when I start meditation clearly I can feel my mental state is at some other level than normal thinking state. It feels like I am moving along for that 20 mins without any effort from me. Infact stopping meditation or that flow might require an effort. At the end of 20 mins automatically i feel the flow has stopped and if i want to continue i have to do it myself. i open my eyes then. Ofcourse some days i will neither feel the flow that much nor will i know automatically at the end of session that i can open my eyes.
-Near
Near, one thing that gets very lost in this forum is something incredibly helpful from Yogani: you can’t judge progress from experience.
One forumite may be glowing in the embrace of her deity, and another may just be feeling relaxed. The first isn’t doing “better” than the second. We’re all wired differently. It’s not about the experience, it’s about the purification, which happens below the conscious level.
It’s true that notwithstanding the above, there are a few milestones that do involve fireworks. But the fireworks are a distraction, and can be tough to manage. It’s a case of “be careful what you wish for”. You may be doing far, far, more purification with your quiet, non-dramatic practice than you could possibly imagine. In fact, your description sounds pretty darned good to me!
But I love fireworks! I want to see some lights, have some electricity in my spine etc… Will be cool 
Let me add. I “may be” doing more purification. I may not be. That “may be” part is what scares me. Till I get some concrete experiences, I wont get the confidence that meditation is working “for me”. (I’m sure that AYP works, basing on my intuition and people’s experiences over here)
Even though such fireworks might distract me temporarily, the confidence they would give are invaluable in my opinion.
-Near
Judge the degree of purification from the degree of grasping you’re doing in the real world. That’s one reason AYP advocates engaging in the world rather than retreating. It’s your yardstick and your mirror.
And if you really dig fireworks, thank goodness you’re not having them. Everything happens perfectly. The confidence, too, happens from noticing shifts of behavior in the real world. Fireworks are just fireworks. Pfft.
I don’t think we will get the fireworks until we are ready, which will probably mean when we can be unattached to them. So this is often a paradox in spiritual matters, what we want we will not get, when we are (mature enough) to not want it then we will get it.
Fireworks aren’t attainment. There’s nothing to attain. Just a bunch of mud to clean off our windows.
The process may or may not generate “experiences”. Those experiences are pure distraction if they do happen. They don’t help.
And that’s really all there is to it, promise.
I rember reading somewhere on the forum that conductivity is dependant on a number of factors.
It depends of the strength of the energy and also on the size of the conductivity channels.
So if you have large channels and average or low energy you may not feel a lot of conductivity.
If you have narrow channels the energy will course through them at a higher pressure and when it meets blockages will spark and feel electric, hence conductivity.
There is no doubt that the presence of conductivity is very reassuring. It can also be a trap which says “oh I’ve got conductivity therefore I must be advanced”. I don’t believe this to be the case any more than someone who is very flexible is very advanced.
It may be as weaver says, you are not ready. But I seem to remember reading that you could feel the energy flowing through your meridians (or am I wrong about this).
Maybe it is your bag, as it is mine, that you will not experience a lot of conductivity, but as Jim pointed out, the real tester is how we interact in the outside world. What changes are happening?, do other people notice a difference in you.?
Louis
Few people notice a difference in me. If I started acting all “yoga-ish”, they would. But I choose not to make stylistic changes to my personality, having no compulsion to telegraph to the world my awesome god-like spirituality.*
But I do perceive, since I started AYP, a difference in how others interact with me (even if they don’t, consciously). Jim versus The World is an entirely different sort of contest…in fact, we’re just about at truce. I notice that I’m not falling less in love with the universe when things don’t go my way.
- I did freak out a friend a couple months ago when we were eating on an outdoor patio and a huge rainstorm erupted and everyone started freaking out and running indoors and I just sat in the middle of it all, grinning and calmly sipping my drink as if nothing had changed. He said “dude, you’ve gotta stop with the yoga already…”