Meditating 10 hours a day: The Aftermath
Sadly I'm not a Wizard, but there's definitely a noticeable difference.
So I recently finished my 8 Part series Is Enlightenment Real? but it actually ended early. I tied off the post with the first big “bang!” that happened on Day 9 where by brain skipped a beat and something happened when it booted back up. Everything in the room appeared to me as more colorful, brighter and lines seemed to be bolder too. I remember going to the bathroom noticing this shimmering blue light on the wall, being confused by what it was and then realizing it was simply the reflection of the blue air freshener sitting on top of the toilet. (I had been at this place 9 days straight and never noticed this). What stood out more was the silence. Like in David Foster Wallace’s talk This is Water, it was as if there had been some sort of ever present noisy buzzing that I wasn’t able to notice until it shut off.
I ended Part 8 explaining that I heard the opening lyric from a song called Big Sky that goes “I know this silence, been here before.” It was pretty accurate commentary because the feeling of quiet, my surroundings appearing more vivid and a feeling that the space around me was massive was similar to when I did a ‘heroic dose’ of psilocybin mushrooms in Amsterdam. The peak of that mushroom trip was pretty bonkers, I basically dissolved into a point of light floating down a long tube… then blacked out and when I awoke the room was slowly collapsing on me and it was covered in vines. However, after all that calmed down over about 45 minutes or so, I finally felt back in my body and able to navigate the world like a human. This “come down” was very pleasant and the room appeared very vivid, it was very silent and it felt very big. I was just in awe with everything. This more down to earth part was uncannily similar to the meditation experience. (Note: the meditation didn’t yield anything near as intense or disorienting as the “peak” of the mushroom trip - no hallucinations with open eyes or anything like that)
Skipping forward a bit, I had several of these brain “malfunctions” during my meditations on Day 10. Here’s my notes on a brief brain short circuit:
-I saw myself sinking into warbling concentric circles, then
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