Skipping levels

[TomJam]

Hey guys. I have skipped straight to level 3 in an attempt to get this done a bit faster. I did give level 10 a go for a about a week but did not reach what I would consider a deep meditative state. When I went to level 3 I certainly felt a more profound affect and stuck with it. After about a week days however I did experience what I think may have been upheaval. Having a very happy childhood and no traumatic events happening in my life (except my dog dying which affected me deeply for months and I still dwell on it from time to time) I thought I may be safe from upheaval. To be honest though I have struggled through drug and alcohol abuse and am still not totally free of these behaviours so there must be something going on deep down. Anyway, I digress.

My question is will the skip in levels truly speed up the process to spiritual enlightenment. If so, I am happy to deal with the upheaval and even see it as a nice challenge for myself to work through. My only hesitation is that it seems to have stunted my journey somewhat which I will now explain.

I started my journey about 2 or three weeks ago. Meditation and the Law Of Attraction are the foundations of this journey at the moment. As far as meditation goes, I meditate every day for 30-120 mins every day. As far as the law of attraction goes, I am not trying to manifest yet, just getting myself in the state where manifestation is possible. I have been concentrating on firstly loving myself completely (which I think I have come very close to achieving) and then being able to be in a state of appreciation/love no matter what situation I was experiencing. At first the results were amazingly fast! I was on lifeflow 10 when I was in the loving myself stage and whilst I did not feel I was making any progress in the meditation arena I did feel I was making extreme progress in loving myself. I then moved to lifeflow 3 and things really started to ramp up.

Firstly, after a day or two on level 3 I started to really get 'good' at meditation. I was able to still my mind to extents that I never thought I would get to. Also I could create scenes or visions of absolute bliss in which my entire body would tingle. I started to really be able to get my self in a state of appreciation whenever I wanted. The feeling was amazing, it was very similar to the first few times of being on ecstasy. I felt tremendous joy, love and even sometimes short experiences of what I consider to be peace. I could maintain these states for extended periods of time in any situation. I got an email from my old boss asking me if I could work for a few days whilst someone was away. I hated this job but saw it as an opportunity to test myself (I am now a self employed currency trader so I can drop my own work any time I please). I found I could maintain these states even whilst doing a job I hated just by focusing on different aspects of the job and silently loving every other person in the office. But then I hit upheaval.

I woke up feeling extremely anxious and depressed after having a very successful meditation session before I went to bed. No matter how hard I tried I could not bring myself out of it. I went for a very long walk and started trying to release it instead of trying to shift my focusses to better feeling thoughts as this was obviously not working. I questioned and pondered and finally felt some dissolving of these feelings when I stopped at a beautiful creek. Once I felt better I moved on and straight away I passed a man walking his dog that gave me a big smile and we had a brief but very pleasant interaction. I felt tremendous love toward this man and began to get the great feeling of appreciation back. I was appreciating nature and I came across some girls having a pick-nick and again, after a brief interaction had a tremendous feeling of love. The next day however I experienced what I feel was upheaval and could not pul myself out of it even after a long walk. I resolved to go back to lifeflow 9 and take things a little slower.

This was the last extended feeling of appreciation that I have had and it has now been 5 days. I feel like I am back to where I started or even worse. I am not thoroughly depressed, I never was, but I can't seem to get myself in those appreciation states that I could before and my meditation has become frustrating again rather than invigorating. I have a festival on this weekend that my girlfriends family and I have organised and I do not want to be in a state of upheaval for it, so I am not going to go back to lifeflow 3 before that, but I plan to the day the festival ends (start of next week).

Would be very thankful for any responses to this rambling post

[pollyanna]

Welcome to the community Tom

Sounds like you were doing really well on LF10. Self love and appreciation are vitally important to your health, happiness and well-being. There is a gratitude exercise Michael recommends on CD2 of the Discover Meditation Free Course. He recommends you do this after your meditation and it’s a powerful exercise when done on a daily basis. I personally have created the habit of doing this each morning when I shower.

Each level of LifeFlow guides you gently and naturally into an extremely beneficial brainwave state that builds a solid foundation for the next deeper level. Here’s a link to why it’s important to not skip any levels…

Experiences of LF 9 - LF 1?

And another link which includes a chart detailing the benefits of each level…

Brainwave States

As we grow up we try to suppress any negative emotions in order to fit in with and be accepted by society. We think that by suppressing them they will go away. However, suppressed emotions never go away, they actually grow and build up inside us. We find ways to distract ourselves by developing coping mechanisms to avoid actively dealing with the problem. Some of these coping mechanisms are compulsive cleaning, over-working and not being able to sit and relax, comfort-eating, alcohol and drug abuse. We will do many things to resist dealing with these suppressed emotions.

However, if we let ourselves look inwards with a lack of involvement, this will enable us to observe our individual patterns of resistance.

Meditation helps us to gradually release backlogs of stress and suppressed emotions. In order to do this, suppressed emotions will at some point be brought to the surface during or outside of meditation to allow them to be released. With this in mind, you may occasionally feel irritable, restless, fearful, unhappy etc. If this happens it means you are resisting something. It isn’t the actual suppressed emotion that is making you feel like this; it is the resistance itself that is causing the discomfort.

The solution to resisting is to simply and unemotionally observe the sensation which could be a tightness in your stomach or a tenseness. Don’t get carried away with the story of thoughts, just focus and accept the sensation that accompanies them. Simply watch with great curiosity and indifference. When you consciously and calmly observe anything that does not serve you well it will simply fritter away. Letting go of suppressed emotions is truly liberating and it frees you up to tap into your own creative genius.

Outside of your meditation practise you can also benefit by playing Creative Flow and Optimal Learning in the background during a number of activities. Here’s a brief description of both and how you can benefit from them…

Creative Flow has been precisely designed to gently guide you into an enjoyable and inspiring theta brainwave state associated with enhanced creativity.

Countless studies have proven that theta brainwaves are highly present in our creative processes and by entering the THETA state of mind, you actually enhance your insight, creativity and complex problem solving abilities.

You can listen to Creative Flow with headphones and without and you can play for as long as you choose with a variety of activities. Here are a few suggestions…

Relaxing
Studying and revising
Designing, painting and creative work
Reading
Working at computer
Using affirmations and auto suggestions


OPTIMAL LEARNING

Optimal Learning is designed to gently guide you in to the alpha brainwave state commonly named by scientists as “The super learning state”.
You will be able to get in the zone instantly and save hours of wasted time.
Your reading or studying becomes laser focused, as you retain more at faster speeds.
You can listen to Optimal Learning with headphones and without and you can play for as long as you choose whenever you are learning, studying or simply relaxing.

I hope this is of help to you and wish you an abundance of peace and joy

[SaharaPDX]

Hi Tom. Three things jump out from your post:

1. Your belief that achieving the state of enlightenment is a linear journey, best undertaken by doing x, y, and z, with predictable results

2. Your belief that achieving said state will alleviate your current human suffering. Finally,

3. Your inability to accept whatever state you're currently feeling, with a palpable need to change it.

Enlightenment isn't "out there", something that can be achieved like moving from kindergarten to high school graduation in a systematic and orderly fashion. It's within you always, a tearing of the veil, offering you a glimpse of your true nature. It's always available to you in the present moment, when you drop your need to have the present moment be any different than it is.

The sensations you feel in meditation are just that - sensations. Some are pleasant, some are not. Assigning great meaning to the pleasant sensations is as unhelpful as questioning the unpleasant sensations (boredom, itching foot, wandering mind, etc). The mind notices the sensation, then returns to center.

There's nothing to "speed up" about this process. Listening to level 1 rather than level 10 won't move you towards anything any faster, because there's nothing out there to move towards. On a very real, practical level, I would ease up. Bill Harris (owner of Holosync) recounted some very real distress when he first discovered binural beats and he basically "OD'd" on them. Spirituality aside, the human body can only handle so much input. After all, you wouldn't start running a 1/2 mile one day and then expect to run a marathon the next week, would you?

Two authors who may lend more insight to what I'm saying (as I'm a bit short on time right now) are Scott Kiloby and Jan Frazier.

[TomJam]

Cheers polly, very helpful info. I have now gone back to level 10 and will do the entire course as recommended. I realise that I had it in my mind that the further and deeper I go the more benifit I will see in the immediate future. I guess I thought there would be a glorious end to enlightenment, self actualisation or whatever you want to call it. I think I now realise that there will probably never be an end, it will just be an amazing journey and I should kick back and enjoy it.

One point on the advice you gave on just observing the feeling without getting involved in it. I have tried this (using the focussing method) and it seems much easier said than done. Maybe I just need practice but are there any tips you could give me. I think everyone is different and I will probably have to find my own way to go about it, but any tips would be appriciated.

Thanks again and have a great day

ps I use the grattitude exercise after every meditation session and it is great