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Tony Balcer's Case History

Posted to Jhanas: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:08:49 -0400

   From: "Tony Balcer" <yogaguy@comcast.net>

Subject: Re: Re: meditation practice

Hi Alan

  My meditation experiences all arived through the practice of yoga poses, corpse pose "savasana" being the most useful. Know one really ever showed me how to meditate other than what I learned from my yoga practice! I just interpreted the words and study of breath release a little differently than all my other fellow class mates. Most people feel that you should totaly depend on relaxation of the breath to find release, thus taking one to a deeper level of meditation. I felt that some mental effort should be applied "tapas". So I began to release my self mentaly away from my breath the same way I would disengage other senses, such as touch, hearing and awareness in the eyes. I finally found my self sitting back in my mind as the observer watching my breath. As I became very still and quiet, I noticed my breath stopped. My emotions "fear" would try and interfer, causing me to gulp for air. One day I, realizing that people who are knocked unconscious and stopped of breath will eventualy breath automatically, observed my breath and did not respond to my emotional fear but instead just observed my chest and lungs for a few minutes. Just as I thought, my body breathed on its own with out any or of any mental desire or control by my emotions or will of mind. When my body breathed, my chest swelled up like a big barrel, I heard every rib crack! This experience soon allowed me to expereince sensation of my heart chakra. After becoming familiar with the sensation and location of the heart chakra, I soon was able to locate and experience awarness of the other chakras. After this I followed a model in a book describing kundalini and its activation and was able to perform this acording to the books I read. The kundalini experience brought about a Jhana that lasted for about two weeks"never being able to sleep but only meditate for rest" I could not comprehend at that time all the sensations sexual etc that where happening in my body without any control by me, so I ended the Jhana by grounding the energy back downward, by visual imagery of rain falling from the top of my head downward and by also asking my spiritual self to take its time with me for I felt I was not ready yet! Emediately I felt as if sparks were igniting in and around the organs of my body, as this imaginary force of rain inside my body brought the energy or awarness of energy back down and out of my head! Within a few days thee unwillful sensing of going ons inside of my body subsided. Now it has been a year plus and I have learned much about what happened and what else could happen and am preparing to make effort soon to reach a spiritual plain, in my attempt to reach enlightenment! I have learned since other technichs that will make my meditation even deeper and more effective, such as awareness and control of the toroise nerve in the neck and the aplication of bondas in the body, all of these applied to help stop the rise of thoughts by the organs of the body and control the emotional responses of the heart. I also feel I have understanding internally of how to bring the heart to rest just as I did the lungs. I will attempt all of this in the near future. Appreciate any insight and suggestions.

Namaste,  Tony

Yogaguy

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