Term for when the darkness behind your eyes seems to grow?

[ButtonButtoff]

A couple of times while (closed eye) meditating, something happens to my perception. It’s like the regular "black" I see when my eyes are closed, that starts to expand. Like, if that normal black made up 100% of what I “see”, the field of view grows to 200%. I'm having a hard time putting this to words and the google results I’ve found haven't been very helpful.

Is there an established word for that? Thanks

 

[visitor]

Congrats, this is a good indication that whatever you are doing is working. Without giving you a dogmatic answer, you experienced deeper state of meditation:

Normal waking brain is in Beta waves (12-30 Hz)

Light meditation is Alpha waves (8-12 Hz)

Deeper meditation is Theta waves. (This is most likely where you are in 4-8 Hz)

This state is generally called void.

Since I'm assuming you are not very familiar with this state I would suggest you get comfortable in it. This is sort of like launching pad for what you can do with your consciousness. Some people go out-of-body, some go deeper into meditation, some visualization.

 

[ButtonButtoff]

Oh thank you! I had seen the term “void”, but I couldn't seem to find a solid description on what the void state felt like.

Out of curiosity, would you mind sharing what would have been the dogmatic answer? If you care to, no worries

 

[Accipeveldare]

A couple of times while (closed eye) meditating, something happens to my perception. It’s like the regular "black" I see when my eyes are closed, that starts to expand. Like, if that normal black made up 100% of what I “see”, the field of view grows to 200%. I'm having a hard time putting this to words and the google results I’ve found haven't been very helpful.

Is there an established word for that? Thanks

One of my favorire states. I love to simply drift in that state and let whatever happens happen. It is as if i am content to stay there forever.

 

[visitor]

Well, I'm going to assume that you want a dogmatic names for it in order to find other people's experience and tips for this state.

I'm a big fan of The Monroe Institute, and in their terms you achieved

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. (You can click on

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and it will redirect you to their focus level's page)

I'm pretty sure, Buddhist's call this state Śūnyatā.

Other than that I don't really know other names for it.

but I couldn't seem to find a solid description on what the void state felt like.

(Little bit food for thought) Since you can experience this state, your experience is the most important, because at the end of the day you are the one who is in that state.

My recommendation in this state is:

-Relax, your heart rate might increase. (at least that's what 90% of time happens to me), sources that I linked suggest that the heart rate experienced is overexaggerated from what it actually is. BUT if its too much, STOP, because even if you achieve deeper meditation state, it will manifest as a bad experience, since you are aware of unfamiliar state of your heart.

Proof that increased heart rate happens, but it's usually just inside your brain
1st link:

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2nd link:

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3rd link:

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-Your body will start to dissolve (if it hasn't already), for me personally my hands become very big, and my head becomes very small.
In this state I suggest to relax (I know, relaxation is the answer to 99% of things )

-Pressure building up inside the head.
For this I suggest do not try to push for more than you can handle. (This is usually before the void) If the pressure feels too much, STOP, or try to lower the amount of pressure inside your head.

But the way that I see it, in order for your brain to start adopting new concept and unfamiliar states (meditation and the states that it offers), the pressure sensation may be related to the brain adapting to an unfamiliar state of awareness, but I don't know what the actual neurological mechanism is. Also adaption might be occurring where it shouldn't be occurring, that's why you shouldn't over force it. (This is my own concept and not scientifically proven)

-Vibration inside/very loud sound your ears. I believe Buddhists describe this as thousand waves clashing sound. Do not acknowledge them, do not panic. Imagine you just happened to be inside tornado, don't worry it will pass.

-After vibrations pass (which will be instantaneous), you can stay inside the stillness of the deeper void, or you can continue and experience full OOBE (Out-Of-Body-Experience). To experience OOBE, just imagine rolling out of your body, or rising from your body (feet in place, upper body rising, the end result should be you are standing upright at the end of your physical feet), or imagine an object inside your environment, then imagine you next to it.

-General rule of thumb that I always follow is that I try to be in a good mood before going into meditation and this very often leads to a pleasant experience. Now this might sound cliché, but try to feel love inside your heart before starting meditation which as a result will lead to a faster achievement in desired state, but I've also started meditation's where my heart felt heavy and I felt anger when I initially started meditation, but when in meditation process it softened and at the end I was feeling love, which resulted in the same goal achieve, but it took longer.

To be honest, this might a be too much of a scientific and/or personal answer than you are looking for. But when you enter this unfamiliar state, I would recommend to always keep a certain level of discernment, even from your body.

And also that your brain is trying to protect you from this unfamiliar state by its nature, therefore expect some resistance from it, this is mainly why I say relax, because when you will look back onto your first experiences in the future of this state called 'void', you will see that everything went fine and that worry occurred from the sole fact that you were unfamiliar with the state.

(These are my experiences and therefore your experiences might differ)

Sources:

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[airplane_flaps]

Congrats, I have only ever got to this place once while mediating and I tried to chase it and got burnt out on mediation for a while.

 

[visitor]

Congrats, I have only ever got to this place once while mediating and I tried to chase it and got burnt out on mediation for a while.

Hello, I want to share some advice on burning out whilst ‘chasing’ the void.

Think about it this way:

When you go to sleep, do you think of going to sleep? No, you just relax and sleep comes naturally.

So, my tip for this problem is. Go into meditation without any goal.

When I do this I very often achieve the ‘void’, but also sometimes I don’t, and achieve different states like very vivid visualisation or out-of-body-experience.

Now this is my personal opinion of why you would want to pursue the achievement of ‘void’ in your meditation.

Because you get access to higher self or your subconscious (whatever you want to call it). If I ever have a problem in my life, my higher self or subconscious knows how to deal with it, and what the outcome of that problem will be. (I’m not going to go into the idea of everything is one, God experiencing himself through us, we are one consciousness or the idea of I-There cluster. But long story short, answers seem to come there)

I don’t know if you are into rituals and stuff like that, but a lot of practices warn against a ‘Lust for results’—meaning that obsessing over the outcome actually blocks it from happening. So, expecting and forcing yourself to achieve the ‘void’ could possibly be attributed to that?

Also a little tip, which you’ve probably heard many times is, focus on your breathing. Your conscious mind will try to wander off and it will succeed, but by focusing on your breathing you will keep wandering under some control. When your conscious mind wanders off when meditating, just focus back onto your breathing.

I will attach a file from The Monroe Institute ‘Exploring other lives’. This is a tape about experiencing your past lives, but it has a very good guided meditation technique which helped me at first to achieve the ‘void’.

Hopefully this helps and good luck on your journey

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[ButtonButtoff]

Well, first off I want to say thanks. I’ve gone from only achieving that state a hand full of times, to once every few days of really trying.

Don’t suppose you have any advice for the hypnotic jerks, do you? When I first started meditating I had these mildly scacry twitches after a certain amount of relaxation. That just stopped after a while, but now something like that keeps pulling me out of the void.

It legitimately feels like someone gives my bed a a hard sudden shake. It took me a while to figure out it had to be a similar kinda twitching, it felt entirely external. It seems to happen every time I am in that void longer than a few minutes.

Do I just power through? Am I already bringing in tension I don’t know about? I’m really not trying to use you for what I can just google. Google just sucks now and you’re the only one so far to give a good answer.

 

[visitor]

Well, first off I want to say thanks. I’ve gone from only achieving that state a hand full of times, to once every few days of really trying.

Don’t suppose you have any advice for the hypnotic jerks, do you? When I first started meditating I had these mildly scacry twitches after a certain amount of relaxation. That just stopped after a while, but now something like that keeps pulling me out of the void.

It legitimately feels like someone gives my bed a a hard sudden shake. It took me a while to figure out it had to be a similar kinda twitching, it felt entirely external. It seems to happen every time I am in that void longer than a few minutes.

Do I just power through? Am I already bringing in tension I don’t know about? I’m really not trying to use you for what I can just google. Google just sucks now and you’re the only one so far to give a good answer.

Hello again,

And congrats on achieving this state handful of times.

No, I don’t mind you asking questions about meditation, I really like to help people on this matter. But also I’m learning new stuff all the time also, so don’t see me as some sort of expert.

I don’t have this specific problem, but I had similar physical problems and maybe my fixes for them will help you.

-Leg cramps whilst meditating. This was fixed by drinking magnesium and potassium. Keeping the temperature in my meditation spots warm. Mitigating the amount of stress in my life. Avoiding nicotine before me

-Twitches, for some reason I get twitches sometimes (my whole head twitches to the right). I don’t know how to fix it, so I just let it happen.

-Semen retention (if you are a guy), this is semi related to fixing those problems. When I’m full of sexual energy, something changes. I care less about my physical body, therefore when my heart starts racing whilst in meditation, or I get a twitch, I shrug it off. I just stop caring so much about my body. That doesn’t mean that I trash my body, it just means that the divide between body and mind becomes stronger.

-Things like caffeine, nicotine (if you are using them). Try to find the perfect spot for these substances, where it just satisfies your craving. I personally tried out a lot of different supplements for the sole purpose of deeper meditation. Magnesium L-Threonate, high doses of L-Theanine, Modafinil, NAC and many more. The only thing that I would recommend from my personal experience is possibly NAC, if you have quite a bit of stress. Other than that I haven’t found other substances super useful. Also I came to the conclusion, that if I always keep chasing supplements as a way to better my meditation, I will never focus on the thing that actually matters, and that’s meditation. So even though I’m saying supplements might help, I would strongly advise to not see them as your gateway to deeper meditation.

In post’s before I said that the ego sometimes makes up stuff to get out of meditation, because ego is in danger. Even though you said that it felt completely external, here’s some food for brain:

-Since your sensory inputs (eyes, ears, body feedback) are being deprived, your body increases the sensitivity in other sensory input (nervous system). So what could be a small twitch can translate into a perceived bed shake because of the increased sensitivity in nervous system.

-Might want to look at the Gateway tapes, Rob Monroe has a specific method of protecting your energy and giving your ego a safe space called REBAL (Resonant Energy Balloon). I have attached google drive link with the tape.

You can’t ‘power though’ to achieve the void. For the following reason:

-If your intention is to achieve the void before you go into meditation, your ego will constantly look if that objective is complete. Therefore, you will keep yourself attached to the body. Whilst the goal is to forget the body. Try to go into meditation with no goal, and when you do so, sometimes you will experience the void, after you can somewhat consistently achieve the void you will get used to it and it won’t be your goal, you will just simply know that it will happen. Imagine this, you go to sleep, you close your eyes and because you’ve done it your whole life you don’t need to constantly keep thinking ‘Am I already sleeping’, simply because you are so used to sleeping you know that you will sleep. Same with meditation, after some time you will go to meditation knowing that you will achieve the ’void’ because you are so used to it.

When you go into meditation think that you are simply going on a little trip, you don’t know where this trip will take you and most importantly the destination doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is the journey, and on this journey you will learn different things about yourself, your body, and you will learn different techniques of meditation.

I just cannot put into the words on how much the idea of achieving something whilst meditating doesn’t matter when you are starting out.

Also, if it were possible to have one technique of meditation, that is the best, the most efficient, and the most relaxing. We would already know about it because it would be so good, but unfortunately everybody is different. I can only share my own experience on what helps me, but at the end of the day, you will have to find/carve out your own.

Hopefully this helps, and best of luck.

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[frank1]

Hello again,

And congrats on achieving this state handful of times.

No, I don’t mind you asking questions about meditation, I really like to help people on this matter. But also I’m learning new stuff all the time also, so don’t see me as some sort of expert.

I don’t have this specific problem, but I had similar physical problems and maybe my fixes for them will help you.

-Leg cramps whilst meditating. This was fixed by drinking magnesium and potassium. Keeping the temperature in my meditation spots warm. Mitigating the amount of stress in my life. Avoiding nicotine before me

-Twitches, for some reason I get twitches sometimes (my whole head twitches to the right). I don’t know how to fix it, so I just let it happen.

-Semen retention (if you are a guy), this is semi related to fixing those problems. When I’m full of sexual energy, something changes. I care less about my physical body, therefore when my heart starts racing whilst in meditation, or I get a twitch, I shrug it off. I just stop caring so much about my body. That doesn’t mean that I trash my body, it just means that the divide between body and mind becomes stronger.

-Things like caffeine, nicotine (if you are using them). Try to find the perfect spot for these substances, where it just satisfies your craving. I personally tried out a lot of different supplements for the sole purpose of deeper meditation. Magnesium L-Threonate, high doses of L-Theanine, Modafinil, NAC and many more. The only thing that I would recommend from my personal experience is possibly NAC, if you have quite a bit of stress. Other than that I haven’t found other substances super useful. Also I came to the conclusion, that if I always keep chasing supplements as a way to better my meditation, I will never focus on the thing that actually matters, and that’s meditation. So even though I’m saying supplements might help, I would strongly advise to not see them as your gateway to deeper meditation.

In post’s before I said that the ego sometimes makes up stuff to get out of meditation, because ego is in danger. Even though you said that it felt completely external, here’s some food for brain:

-Since your sensory inputs (eyes, ears, body feedback) are being deprived, your body increases the sensitivity in other sensory input (nervous system). So what could be a small twitch can translate into a perceived bed shake because of the increased sensitivity in nervous system.

-Might want to look at the Gateway tapes, Rob Monroe has a specific method of protecting your energy and giving your ego a safe space called REBAL (Resonant Energy Balloon). I have attached google drive link with the tape.

You can’t ‘power though’ to achieve the void. For the following reason:

-If your intention is to achieve the void before you go into meditation, your ego will constantly look if that objective is complete. Therefore, you will keep yourself attached to the body. Whilst the goal is to forget the body. Try to go into meditation with no goal, and when you do so, sometimes you will experience the void, after you can somewhat consistently achieve the void you will get used to it and it won’t be your goal, you will just simply know that it will happen. Imagine this, you go to sleep, you close your eyes and because you’ve done it your whole life you don’t need to constantly keep thinking ‘Am I already sleeping’, simply because you are so used to sleeping you know that you will sleep. Same with meditation, after some time you will go to meditation knowing that you will achieve the ’void’ because you are so used to it.

When you go into meditation think that you are simply going on a little trip, you don’t know where this trip will take you and most importantly the destination doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is the journey, and on this journey you will learn different things about yourself, your body, and you will learn different techniques of meditation.

I just cannot put into the words on how much the idea of achieving something whilst meditating doesn’t matter when you are starting out.

Also, if it were possible to have one technique of meditation, that is the best, the most efficient, and the most relaxing. We would already know about it because it would be so good, but unfortunately everybody is different. I can only share my own experience on what helps me, but at the end of the day, you will have to find/carve out your own.

Hopefully this helps, and best of luck.

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Awesome post!!!