Here is an observation I had not considered as it does not seem to be the case for me: for some, mantra meditation can lead to depression:
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2855
Hi anthony574 - are you still around on these forums? Sorry to dig up an ancient thread, but I’m curious how your experience with solipsism has unfolded over the years. I have a very similar history and experience to what was discussed in this thread and I’m looking for some guidance.
I’m 100% on the grounding train, yet every now and then, the experience does sneak up on me out of the blue. I’d love to understand if this sort of thing is something that gets “purified” away with the help of AYP practices over time.
I suppose Anthony may not be active here anymore, since his last post was a few years ago.
But maybe someone else here has had a similar experience with resolving solipsism permanently?
After doing a bit of searching online, it seems this is not an uncommon experience. I had an experience around a decade ago that triggered this for me. It comes on unexpectedly at times. Yesterday I was playing with my dog and just looking into his eyes for an extended moment brought on this deep seated fear that I’m the only “thing” that exists and that life is just an illusory experience I conjured up to keep myself distracted from feeling a hellish, everlasting aloneness/loneliness. The feeling can become so overwhelmingly scary and the experience feel so much more real than physical life.
I do my best to turn away from those thoughts when I fall into this state to ride it out until it passes and I’ve managed to stay sane and functional, but my goal is to move past it, since it does keep happening. I do a decent amount of grounding. Exercise, lots of work with my hands around the house and my job keeps me very occupied and consistently engaged with people.
I just don’t know if I can somehow process/purify it out of my system with AYP or some other approach, or if I have to just deal with it. The ultimate fear is that I can keep outrunning it for now, but death will make it inescapable and that terrifies me. I didn’t fear death before all of this.
I had similar experiences on psychedelics. And I think many people have such experiences. How much we are impacted by them depends I guess on many factors, but to a large extent it might be a matter of how much weight/credibility we attach to any such experience. If the experience comes with this attached quality of revealed truth, do we treat the insight afterwards as “as if true” or “true”? I personally managed (so far) to treat any such as experience simply as “as if true” in retrospect, even though during the experience there was no question about it being “true”.
I think, for me personally, one of the coolest things I learned through exploring my mind with psychedelics (and now also with meditation) is to allow myself to have (and remind myself to be aware of) several belief systems, that can be switched like functional clothing for different weather conditions.
I got inspired to see it that way after reading John C Lily’s book “The deep Self”, where he writes:
Hi TensorTympani. I get your point. For the most part, as I go about my daily life, I just live it like most people (at least how I imagine most people live) and no concepts related to solipsism enter my mind. And even if I actively reflect back on the experiences I had, there’s not much substance to the memories of those experiences. I feel grounded and happy to go on living my life.
Then at some points in time (quite rare, all things considered) a feeling comes upon me and I feel like I’m falling out of physical life, to what feels like a much more true and quite sinister reality. If I allow myself to fall into that state without holding on to the physical world, that “reality” takes on a more real and more sinister form and I’m faced with a decision about what the truth of it all is. The choices I have available to me are all double edged swords. It becomes too confronting and so I breathe with intention and consciously turn my thoughts elsewhere, to run away from that experience.
I wrote my previous messages when I was fresh out of one of these experiences where the stakes still felt high and it still really worried me that I will have to face a large dose of this reality when I die. Only that at that point I won’t be able to turn my thoughts elsewhere and run away and instead I will be brought into a place that feels like my own personal hell.
So while I’m clear headed now, I’m pretty convinced this will continue to keep creeping up on me and whatever the cause, I’m quite curious if the result of AYP practices, that is, the purification process, is that such things get dissolved. My assumption that this is the case is actually one of the main reasons that I re-started with AYP after something like a decade long hiatus from practices.
This is the case, Andy, at least in my experience (10 years AYP). There could be some “strong episodes” along the way, depending on one’s blockages, so be prepared to self pace and ground. In fact, yogis should build grounding practices into everyday routine. Not only is it stabilizing, but also could allow one to take on more practices.
Hi andy, I don’t have this fear and worry attached to these kind experiences, so I don’t know for sure if AYP will help. But I would also guess that it will in the long run. Once you reach the stage of ``abiding inner silence’’ were such emotions and worries could just be released into stillness whenever they occur, they will likely not have such a grip anymore. This releasing might then also naturally happen as self-inquiry gets going once this witness stage is fully there (see lesson https://www.aypsite.org/350.html). I’m not there yet, but I have seen glimpses of the witnessing state so that I believe it’s in reach.
So I think AYP might move you beyond this fear even though it might also trigger it sometimes along the path.
It’s not precisely on topic (it’s about a different fear), this lesson https://www.aypsite.org/373.html contains a quote by Yogani I feel is somewhat in line with my attitude of accepting the possibility of never knowing:
Edit: Even though the last line resonates with my gut feeling, I would still never subscribe to such a statement. It’s a good attitude. But I would still like to be even more open minded like John C Lilly:
Thank you Dogboy, that’s reassuring to hear. Would you mind sharing what your experiences were like at the start and then what they have transformed to now after 10 years of purification? My experiences during these episodes is very separating, not at all the unifying perception that Yogani talks about throughout the lessons, in the advanced stages of purification.
And yes, grounding has been a hot topic for me and especially lately. I’m noticing the subtler clues more easily now when I’m not quite grounded enough.
Most of my purification symptoms involve weeping, and the sense I was watching myself weeping. There was a space between. This happened mostly in DM three years in; I was unsettled and broke meditation and went prone on a bolster, and something in that action broke a dam inside me. Luckily no one was home because it was a noisy ugly cry, reviewing my troubled life (was juggling so many balls at the time) watching and weeping. I was very weak but deeply calm in the aftermath.
You are likely to have different experiences, but the concept is the same. Whatever you have stashed away could bubble forth. It is a lesson in surrender.
Sounds like a very profound unraveling. Thank you for sharing, Dogboy
Hi Andy. I can relate to your experience and it makes me feel I’m not alone seeing someone else all about this.
I too have recently experienced this you describe. Though I recently began, and stopped because of it, experimenting with psilocybin mushrooms, and I blame this experience on that. I am convinced this experience we share is what is described here as a "premature crown opening “.
To be clear, I never had a bad experience while under the influence, in fact it was positive and when I micro dosed the days were exponentially improved. It was as if I was at my sweet spot in yoga practices at the flip of a switch, or in this case the consumption of a fraction of a mushroom.
The problems began randomly at random times, and every single time is seared in my memory due to its intensity and lack of onset warning. The first time I was laying in bed on my phone, and wham, it’s like everyone left (family was near) and I’m alone with this lifesucking presence on top of me. To be clear, no presence was visible nor imagined, just that the emotion I was feeling was of a DIRE EMERGENCY. SOMETHING IS WRONG!! But there remained a part of me that was still, I thank my 16 years of ayp.( Mostly just dm, have never veered past dm for long, though I’ve tasted the best ultimate orgasm through ecstatic conductivity alone in meditation, and still battle remaining celibate to achieve that again)
The still part of me stood there in shock analyzing what the hell is going on, I’m fine, my body’s fine, but worse still, I felt with such certainty, such certainty, that telling my wife what I’m experiencing in this moment, and by doing so asking for help, would absolutely break the camels back and make it worse. I felt this knowing that acknowledgement through communication in that moment would cement that experience for longer, in fact I’m mincing words, it felt like it would remain forever. I also felt like I was going insane and would remainike this forever.
I lay there though breathing through it, incredulously analyzing the void of the feeling I was feeling, it was so consuming. It was taxing, it was detracting from me. Hence the presumption of a presence. It swiftly and slowly began to fade and normalcy swiftly returned. I felt so grateful to feel normal again that I realized feeling normal is such a gift.
This happened 4 more times. On the second time, after having contemplated the first time post-incident, I told myself I would face it, should it happen again, knowing it was temporary. Upon it coming on again, closing the world again and consuming me again, I said to it " go ahead, do your worst” with genuine bravery, and to my surprise, it instantly vanished.
In retrospect I didn’t do that the 3rd and 4th times, I just tiptoed around it like you describe,as if to not wanting to break the shattered glass almost.
The third time I was at work, the fourth time I just sat through it, just letting myself be sucked. All 4 times consistently last around 5 minutes.
The 4th time really challenge my stillness. But I remained still and clearly observed the relationship between the experience and the tightening stress it was causing my body. I couldn’t to ask for help anywhere, I knew that, in spite of the fact I would have traded an arm to make it stop. So I stayed still getting sucked and feeling every second of it. At one point, as I do regularly, automatically, and randomly, my body relaxed, as it does usually, and as it did, I noticed a reduction in the suck. I kept still until it subsided.
I haven’t had heavy episodes like that since, it’s been about 6 months since the last. And needless to say ive stopped the experimentation.
I’ve been doing this ayp for 16 years without anything but praise to speak of. Im certain it was the substances effect on my energy/chakras. At the moment and for weeks I didn’t know what to say of the events. They were jarring like that. It was after time I came to the hypothesis that this is premature crown opening.
I can say with certainty I know what ayp does for me and I knew myself solidly until these occurrences. The extreme emotions and devastating emotions described in the lessons capture the essence of the experience. Ive got so much faith in the ayp system because of what it’s done for me this far (and I’ve got miles to go), and cannot fathom the system not having a map to navigate that abyss of an experience that I trust them to know that particular extreme margin of an experience exists, and thus take them for their only explanation regarding/alluding (to) it.
For the record, I get plenty good boons from ayp practice. Have been faithfully doing 2 sittings a day for a decade and a half. The catalyst that made me venture into the mushrooms was a YouTube video personality named kilindi iyi. He spoke of being able to separate the spirit from the body and travel (trip) with such vernacular that it seemed aligned with my spiritual curiosity.
I never consumed more than the threshold amount so I never achieved that in particular, but I experienced enough to know they are called magic for a reason. Post sessions, My views on many things have been changed for the better, but the path demands what ayp practice provides: a stable practice and a positive spiritual trajectory.
However, Dark pessimism I didn have before endulging, lingers. Could still be the premature crown opening. Could be what the mushroom community calls cleansing. I can’t say for sure, all I know is I had it good before endulging and do and don’t regret taking them.
In some sense this darkness will make me stronger. In another sense if I knew this was in store you bet I wouldn’t have began.
While in sessions though I was as if in perfect yoga practice. All the good qualities meditation and energy practices have on me and I know are the fruits of ayp were instantly activated in sessions, obviously when the effect wore off I was somewhat back to baseline, without the “yoga effects”.
Sorry for rambling, just adding notes for those interested and for science.
At time of this writing, I do not recommend mushrooms for the potential after effects of premature crown opening. The effects during consumption were positive, but having said that, the potential post effects negate the positive tenfold. God knows what I would have done or thought or ended up mentally had I not the 16 years of ayp background to navigate the experiences.
Perhaps an accomplished yogi, with sturdy energy flows, and perhaps sturdy crown can experiment with no I’ll effect. But at my current state I’m done.