Re: Puberty
I've been having mystical experiences since I was a young child. It's just how I'm wired. I used to pay a lot of attention to it, wonder about it, try to figure it out, etc., but now I'm just like, "Yeah, that's just me, I'm weird, what can I say." It's not unimportant, but it's not important, either.
As it happens, though, when I hit puberty, my psychic sensitivity ramped up considerably, and I started to have precog dreams and sometimes other odd phenomena that I hadn't experienced before. I didn't have any sort of self-realisation until I was in my middle thirties, and before I could have that, I had to have a complete breakdown, which was not fun. But I didn't have any lasting or permanent awareness of Consciousness (God/dess, Awareness, Universal Intelligence, Whatever) or of the true nature of reality until I was in my forties. Such has been my journey. Other people take longer, shorter, harder, easier, whatever. It's all extremely individualised and it's affected by all kinds of factors.
Originally Posted by
DarkChylde
after a while you record such an experience/experiences in a journal or make a thread and get on about your day.
I actually have gotten to where I rarely note them at all, unless they have some particular significance to something I'm doing or studying or was thinking about, etc. It seems silly to me now to keep a journal of that stuff, though I did once, and at the time I was doing it, it was meaningful. Now, it isn't. Sometimes the experiences are meaningful, but I know they're ultimately no more important than having a really nice cup or tea or some invigorating sex or reading a good book or whatever else I might be doing.
There's a Zen saying that I always liked, but now I totally, utterly, absolutely get, firsthand. Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Or the famous story of the Zen master, whose student come to him, very excited by the vivid visions and other experiences the student has been having. The master smiles and nods and says, "Yes, yes. Don't worry, it will pass." The experiences may or may not, but the fascination with them does, and it's actually a good thing. Too, it's fun to have all these weird, otherworldly, out-of-body, ethereal and metaphysical experiences and insights and just be like, "Yup, that was all right. Now what's for dinner?" (I like it, anyway. But I relish my weirdness. )
Originally Posted by
BDeye
I was going to post a question whether people have noticed plateaus in their practices.
I don't "practice" anything any more, if I ever really did (okay, I dabbled in a lot of stuff, but other than meditation, which I took up to help me deal with panic/anxiety disorder and post traumatic stress disorder, I never found much use in any of it).
Think of it as crossing a varied terrain. Sometimes you're climbing uphill, sometimes you're sliding downhill, sometimes you're in a valley, sometimes you're walking on level terrain, and so forth. It's not really about plateaus and it's not like some sort of pyramid where there's a magical pinnacle of enlightenment at the top where angels sing and you float on a lotus forever more.
Chop wood, carry water.
May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.
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