Waking, Dreaming & Deep Dreamless Sleep

Unseeking Seeker are you saying you had that disappearing thing during a deliberate meditation? Did you know it was a thing that could happen? JASG also, did you know about it before it happened to you?

I have experienced something like that, but not while sitting in meditation, as such. I'm wondering if it was through grace or from bhakti, because mine was when I was reading scripture and once during a conversation. I wouldn't know how to do it intentionally.

This is why I wanted to know if we have a good definition of samadhi. The description I'm used to would be something like, liberation from the illusion of "I" and "mine", but my understanding of what that might mean in real experience is very blurry.

Speculating about any level of trance or samadhi(?) seems tricky because, unless you have some external cue that tells you time has passed, you might not know to what extent anything happened.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Here's another interesting technique I've barely touched but intend to give more attention in the future.

https://deconstructingyourself.com/n...awareness.html

This one reminds me of Shakti darshana, only ours would be more like, to see every object as overflowing with divinity. There is a similar practice where you close your eyes and place your attention on the heart and then hear the world as though all sounds are the manifestations of one energy. Sometimes it will be a strong energy (loud, invasive) or sometimes a subtle energy (quiet, sounds from the body, etc), and all you do is take that energy in. I'm not sure how one would frame that in a proper advaita context, but it can be a useful technique to know if you find yourself needing to meditate in a place that is not quiet.

[Unseeking Seeker]

In my view, all is grace. From a meditational orientation, gradually softening attention allows us to remain awake and yet slip into a deeper state. Where we land up is not up to us, for if it was, it means we are interfering by drawing in memory of a past experience or perhaps employing imagination to get somewhere, as a doer.

Be it the samadhi type experience or a consciousness expansion (interconnectedness as subject/object) or even an energy (kundalini) based ignition, all is grace, beginning with an aspect of surrender and acceptance.

I imagine, if someone had really internalised that "you are not the doer" (which I haven't), absolutely everything would be experienced as grace.

I didn't mean to imply any other way is not by grace. It's just, there are teachings that read like a map, and then there are ways that don't seem to match the map. Also, I always think it's worth emphasising that all actions be in a spirit of worship and detached from outcome. We can take any teachings in this frame of mind.

[Unseeking Seeker]

Who is the doer during meditation? With thought rested, identity disappears. Grasping ends, connecting begins.

As for the map, the path is pathless, following the pied piper of love ... love being the only real vibration, Gods vibration, innate to our being, felt intimately in each sensory touch as joy, empathy, compassion and bliss, encased in purity of love itself, prismatically displaying its beauteous hues unendingly in renewal continual.

As such, it is simple to distinguish doer or identity based urges versus non-doer. self vs Self. Once aligned in resonance with any aspect of love, in silence & stillness, inner conflict ends.

[Aditi]

You said that very nicely. I think Patanjali said the same, about how you can't have your attention on the selfish self and be surrendered at the same time.