B MIST

Today i woke up after my afternoon nap, and i was enlightened. Then it just vanished.

Question

I have been on the road to enlightenment for almost a year now, meditating almost daily, trying to be more mindful, kind, and loving. Today i woke up from my afternoon nap and i felt the world around me extremely different. The colours were brighter, the smells more intense, the sounds more vibrant, and there was absolutely ZERO mental clutter. My mind was meditating constantly with no effort. It was the state i had studied about for so long and I was finally there, the marvelous void described on all the texts. My eyes watered from joy. After 2 hours of just admiring at the view, i had a task to do. As soon as I got up and started the task, the state sort started diminishing until it completely went away, leaving me with the suffering and mental noise. I feel disoriented and confused. Has this ever happened to anyone? What am i to make of this experience?

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level 1

bodhiquest

vajrayana / shingon mikkyō13 points·7 hours ago

I have been on the road to enlightenment for almost a year now

I guess this is a good occasion to tell you that the road is pretty long, and a year is nothing.

You weren't "liberated for a short time", you just had a nice conditioned experience, probably entered an altered state. That's all. Let it go and keep practicing.

level 2

Kochus

level 1

SamtenLhari

5 points·7 hours ago

Enlightenment is not an experience.

The Tibetans have a saying: “Intellectual understanding is like a patch that falls off; meditation experience is like a mist that is burned off by the sun.” Meditation experiences are fine, there is nothing wrong with them while they are happening. But when they are over, the instruction is to leave them behind — like you would leave behind spit on the sidewalk.