(02-03-2026, 06:35 PM)Frosted Wrote: [ -> ] (02-02-2026, 12:26 PM)hubris101 Wrote: [ -> ]@Frosted interesting writeup, this is certainly nothing to be just dismissed out of hand as a nothing-burger or even a psychotic break, that's the kind of thing people who only know spirituality through books instead of their own sensory experience might say.
Have you become more familiar with systems of describing and categorizing such experiences in the meantime?
I have spent many months on meditation retreats and have been discussing these kinds of things with many people, both peers and teacher, for many years now and have become familiar with a few different models.
Models are not the end all be all but they do have value in helping us make sense of our experiences and how they fit into the context of our lives as well as in relation to other experiences.
A famous model is the Progress of Insight from Theravada Buddhism that has been made famous by among others Daniel Ingram in his book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.
Your experience sounds like what is called the Arising and Passing Away (A&P for short) or more specifically the A&P event, especially considering your surprisingly clear description of the backlash moment(s) after the experience of peak clarity subsides.
You can read about it here if you like: https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-cont...sing-away/
Maybe it will help you out and give you some more insights.
I might not understand the intricacies of what you referenced, but from what I gathered reading the link you sent me, I don’t think that’s a good description of the type of experience I had.
As I understood it, the kind of experience you referenced was more like magical-like experiences. My experience was simply a brief experience of the “veil” separating awareness and form lifting, revealing reality in a more naked form.
When I looked at the sign, I saw the sign, but it wasn’t something apart from “me”. Me “becoming” the sign wasn’t some kind of magical experience, I was just experiencing reality in a more raw form for a few seconds.
Most of my understanding of spirituality came from a bunch of books I read around 2013-2014 and from various sources over the last decade or so (integral theory being one that comes to mind). You bringing up that text did make me think I could pursue reality (I actually meant to say spirituality. Freudian slip!) in a more structured and systematic way, if I decided to.
Most of my spiritual pursuit is passively through a habit I’ve built of focusing on whatever I happen to focus on, essentially trying to shrug out of my “ego” using surrender. Or focusing on pain whenever it comes up, using it to catapult my awareness and trying to not let it consume me. It had to be like this, because when I built the habit it was practically impossible to actually get my mind to focus. I think this “surrender” muscle is pretty well developed in me so maybe that’s why when I started using my “focus” muscle hardcore, I saw a result.
Edit: According to AI, apparently the A&P does seem to fit my experience. I misunderstood because in that link there was a lot of talk about magic-y stuff.
A tremendous amount has been written in trying to describe or generalize the ways in which the A&P can manifest precisely because it can take such a breathtakingly variety of presentations.
The magical stuff is rather beside the point.
The short list goes something like this:
1) It is a Big Thing TM, something that burns itself deeply into memory and feels like a major turning point even if one does not really understand what really happened back then, one simply knows in his bones that whatever that was, it was big, important in a way that may be very hard to grasp or even put into words.
It's kind of like the feeling one might have had the day after 9/11, you don't really know how the world is gonna change but you're damn well certain the world of yesterday is gone and not coming back, you just know it's a true inflection point.
2) Besides being a Big Thing TM, it also tends to be a Peak Experience TM. Often accompanied by great bliss, feelings of unity, peace, non-duality, Understanding!!!! or even of being enlightened already, it tends to stand out as something quite unlike anything else we have experienced before (in Buddhism they call this distinction mundane vs supramundane, no matter how great a mundane experience may be, supramundane aka spiritual/non-dual/whatever terminology you prefer experiences are just of a totally different kind and typically understood to be so by the person having them.
Logically, the first time you have one is rather like losing your spiritual virginity but for real this time, kinda like having truly breathtaking, outrageously passionate, ball-slapping no-holds-barred sex for the first time and going like ah, so that's what the big deal about sex really is.
Interestingly enough, this is perhaps the most apt comparison for non-spiritual people as the moment of orgasm (or at least a potent orgasm as Wilhelm Reich defined it) is more or less the only chance they have to experience cessation of the regular mind and its perpetual monologue thought-stream. Beyond all the excitement and ecstasy and love and all that, there is that point of just blankness where the mind finally settles down and rests within itself for a few brief moments, and then that wave of relief from the pent-up tension of the mind, which is what we truly crave.
It's not like you go about your life permanently thinking about this event afterwards but even 5 years later, you can return to it with that kind of warm nostalgia and go aaaah, that was something truly special.
3) Besides being big and peak, it also tends to be Weird TM. Representing the first contact with true reality, no matter how fleeting, the mind locks onto a new trajectory which is often accompanied by phenomenological developments that "ought to be impossible" according to the old way of looking at things, hence the magical effects. Obviously, the first time it happens, it tends to be the most memorable where people go woaaaaaaaaaah dude, how in the world can this be happening.
The weirdness ofc doesn't only extend to what we tend to consider "magical effects" as pulling tricks on "material" reality but rather profound Insight into non-duality/reality/etc of a scale that was inconceivable just moments before, laying waste to old paradigms and ushering new ones in.
The Buddha did after all call seeing with clarity the greatest siddhi (magical power).
4) Moreover, it tends to be a point of no return where one wants to become a spiritual seeker, a monk, seek out spiritual teachers and teachings and generally devote oneself to the pursuit of Awakening/Enlightenment/Self-realization or whatever practice/school etc they associate with the experience they just had. One often feels like all the rest of life just doesn't compare anymore, is pointless, uninteresting, lowly, even dirty, unholy etc and feels a yearning to shoot for bigger and better things which cannot be found in the mundane world with all its distractions, temptations and entertainments.
.