Search the Community

First of all thanks so much to all those who have welcomed here and dont seem to mind my rapid posting. I feel like i have developed enough a repore now to try to seize the day and work on my deepest, most unresolved wounds i carry with me with those who are inclined to listen and practice loving speech. to do this i would like to unpack and crowd source wise perspective on something I could never satisfactorily discuss with really anyone. I have alluded to having demonic nightmares in other threads in 2013. That in itself led to profound trauma and anxiety/fear of deviating of deviating from my I Ching prescribed path, as in my unripe perspective I ascribed cosmic meaning to the nightmares: that i was punished for deviating from my path. Fast forward a few months and a couple significant spiritual misunderstanding combined with a lack of guidance: I started sleeping about an hour or two a night for I think a month or two. Some nights Id forego sleep altogether. As this progressed I started experiencing minor hallucinations that I could generally discern as being hallucinations, as a result of my sleep deprivation. The exception to this is that I started literally Seeing light and dark energy or I believe I did. In my enviroment Id see little dots of dark or sometimes little orbs of light i think whizzing by. When I would think an unwholesome thought or do an unwholesome action I would See a little bit of light leaving my body. Now at this point of my training I had developed quite a bit of spiritual hubris and inferior virtue and disdain. I would condemn the masses, talk up my progress, and imitate the words and behaviors of those I admired. I say this because one morning this all culminated in a disaster of epic proportions. I consulted the I ching and got hexagrams 45.2.3 -> 28. For those unfamiliar with that configuration hexagram 28 refers to "Prepoderance of the Great" where the ridgepole (foundation) sags to the breaking point and if you "succumb to incorrect behaviors" the "dam bursts and the pent up energy you have accumulated leads to destruction and misfortune" This wasnt my first time recieving hexagram 28, but my first time under such intense circumstances. at some point that morning I made a mild and what i thought was an innocent boast to my mom about how my Cat liked me better than her. Within an instant i saw an orb of light leave my body and an orb of darkness approach me head on. Within moments, it was like a volcano erupted internally: A intense amount of energy I couldnt even percieve before erupted and all my energy dispersed in a vasicillating disturbed and disturbing way. At this moment shock and panic set in. The night before one of my hallucinations was seeing an evil statue on a table in my living room that had pictures of my deceased grandpartents (whom i wasnt that close to.) I dont remember if it was a hallucination that stayed or dissolved or not but nonetheless after I walked towards that room in shock a couple minutes later, processing what had just happened, I accidentally looked towards the table, saw the evil statue and its energy went flying across the room into my (energetic?) body. Skipping the gory details of the week or two that followed for the moment while I have shared this experience to varying extents with others, I never have had the opportunity to share it with anyone with the requisite knowledge and faith to contextualize and not label it at best kundalini syndrome, and much more commonly and alienatingly "psychosis". I was inspired to share this this morning after stumbling upon this tricycle article: https://tricycle.org/magazine/demons-mouth/ about MIlarepa facing demons in his cave. I think finding how to make sense of this situation, feeling understood, and figuring out how to relate to the experiences and fears that surround it would go a long way towards healing and integration. Following these experiences and the ensuing hospitalization and unfortunate misdiagonosis of schizophrenia, I suffered ptsd, intrusive thoughts, you name it. I dealt with it in secrecy and thought supression for literally years, and am open to it now. Im still averse to and afraid of either sacrilegious or demonic intrusive thoughts although I relate to them much better and make more space for them. I still have a ways to go though and I dont know what approach to dealing with them. HOpe to get good feedback. -Elliot

Hi All I'll do my best to explain what brought me here. I began having energetic experiences about 3 years ago through the practice of the Wim Hof Method. His method (for those who don't know) combines breath work with progressive cold exposure. During this practice I would experience sensations best described as "magnetic" in my hands, belly and head during the breath holds. I also began to experience light behind my forehead when I had my eyes closed. I continued this practice for a while but at a certain point I felt that it was a little too frenetic and jarring to my system. I kind of modified the breath practices by slowing down the breathing and limited the cold exposure. A year later I went on a 5 day silent meditation retreat in the Insight tradition. My experience on this retreat was profound and afterwards I began to take meditation very seriously. After about 4 or 5 months of diligent practice I began to have extremely intense bouts of crying and emotional release. These experiences were often accompanied by an intense magnetic sensation in my chest. I had a history of trauma and had battled depression for most of my life... steady meditation practice was essentially releasing the valve on my emotional pressure cooker. I was very overwhelmed by these experiences, but I eventually found a buddhist teacher and a therapist that practiced western psychology within a buddhist framework who I am still working with. These experiences really threw a huge curveball into my life, and the last couple of years have been full of really intense transition and emotional release. As I began to gain some confidence with all the energetic experiences I had been having, I wanted to learn a way to work with them, so I started learning to practice Donna Eden's Energy Medicine, and eventually I enrolled at an Eastern Medicine school to learn Massage Therapy. My most recent experience with the subtle energy happened a few months ago during a moment of intimacy with my partner. My body began convulsing, I started sobbing and I was thrown into intense flashbacks from childhood as well as "memories" that I could not recall from this lifetime. This went on for about 4 hours and was accompanied by many intense visual experiences. Since this has happened, my body has continued tremoring and I've felt a build up of energy in my pelvic floor that is sometimes incredibly difficult to manage - either causing a "hemorrhoid" feeling or intense and difficult to manage sexual energy. A few times, I've been able to draw the energy up to my crown and back down through breathing, resulting in some pretty blissful experiences, but I haven't been able to do it consistently and for the most part this energy has been very difficult to manage. So I'm here looking for some recommendations for practice - While I do have a background in the Martial Arts (Kenpo) I don't have a ton of experience with Qi Gong... I've taken a few classes and read some Mantak Chia but I've never dove into the practice, I find it difficult to learn these things through books. I live in the NY area and am definitely interested in meeting teachers or other practitioners who my experiences resonate with. I'm also happy to have a place to share these experiences where people will have more understanding and experience with what I'm going through.

some time ago i found the book ' waking the tiger' in the secondhand-shop. The ways of DAO are great, to bring this book on my path at the moment i'm able to understand and use the content. The book explains how posttraumatic stress can lead to all the symptoms it does and how to get rid of it. The reading of it was so emotional to me that i've read it in small sections. But now I do understand what is happening to me. Part of the exercises i do is spontaneous movement, the effects can be astounding and after reading this book i do understand much better what is happening. ( and also why the effects are so different compared to my fellowstudents) i thought i'd post it, maybe other bums with these kind of problems can make use of it