Out of body experience
Hello, new friends. I wanted to share an experience and perhaps gain insight on an experience I had last night. For starters, I have only meditated a handful of times in my life - but for the past two nights before bed, I have made a point to take time and simply lay still, breathe, and let my mind relax its grip.
The first night, I felt supremely relaxed and engaged with my environment, but only for an instant. But last night, I experienced something I’ve never known. For what felt like a few minutes - but was probably more like half an hour or so - I was simply breathing and feeling all the sensations in my body, without moving. But then, something happened that I can’t explain. It felt like my conscious mind shifted completely out of the picture, and I no longer felt my body or was even aware of it. It felt like i had no body, and it felt like my “being” was indescribably large. I felt like I was the size of an ocean. Or maybe a mountain. Or maybe the universe. It felt so visceral and palpable that in that moment, it simply was true. I felt connected, at peace, and fulfilled. It’s very hard to describe, but it felt like in that moment I was not anything at all, or maybe that I was everything. I’m not sure.
After a bit, my mind poked into the experience and seemed to try to assert itself and assign meanings to it, or at least attempt to. I engaged with some of those thoughts, and then attempted to return back to the previous level of experience. I decided to sleep and consider it all the next day.
I guess I could say I’m not sure what to do with that experience, if anything. I don’t want to assign a meaning or purpose to something that isn’t meant to have any. But today, I feel like there must be something I can take away from that. I guess my questions would be: is this experience something thats pointing me in a certain direction? Does it have any kind of intrinsic value or meaning? Is there anything I should do next?
Being that I’ve never experienced anything like that before - and that I’m new to the concepts of meditation in general - I’m an open book.