Please Help Me Understand My Meditation Experience
Hi folks, I'm a guy from Germany, in my 40s, and I wanted to talk about a meditation experience I had roughly 20 years ago. I'm not practicing at the moment, but I want to get back into it, and I need some help putting my experience into the correct Buddhist context.
Back then, when I was in my early 20s, I developed an interest in Buddhism after having some insights of my own and wanted to delve deeper. I found a Buddhist monastery close to me and asked them if I could stay and live with them for a couple of weeks. They allowed this, and I went there three times in total, staying between two and three weeks each time.
The monastery practices Theravada Buddhism, specifically the Thai Forest tradition, and they're connected to Ajahn Brahm.
At that point, I only had a rudimentary understanding of what I would call "pop Buddhism" and didn't know how deep the rabbit hole actually goes. But I really liked the mindfulness and meditation practices, and since this is quite a secluded place by German standards, it was just perfect for that.
I became really focused on mindfulness and meditation because it was all new and exciting to me. I think I meditated at least four to five hours a day, alternating between sitting and walking meditation. Otherwise, I was reading books or walking in the woods. And, of course, I was working and contributing to the monastery in the mornings.
The meditation practice was challenging, especially the pain that developed after 30 minutes or so, but I got better at dealing with it over time.
At a certain point while practicing meditation, rapture (pīti) started to occur. For me, it felt like slow-moving waves of wholesome electricity going through my whole body. At first, I got totally excited about it, and poof, it went away immediately.
But I learned to relax into the feeling more and more, and then it went even deeper. Pleasure (sukha) started to occur, and for me, this felt like a ball of light in the middle of my body, somewhere between my groin and stomach. This light became stronger and stronger with every wave of pīti.
As with pīti, whenever I got excited about what was happening, the feeling became weaker or disappeared completely. But then, one time, I somehow managed to fully surrender to it.
Once that happened, it felt like the whole universe gave me a hug. It felt like universal love, and I can truly say that I was gone at some point. There was just this love, and I dissolved into it and became it. No body anymore, no thoughts, no meditation object (the breath), not even the watcher—just love.
I don't know how long I stayed in this state. When it was over, I cried. It moved me very deeply, and afterwards I even contemplated becoming a monk. (I didn't, which is a different story.)
For the next couple of days, I still felt pīti arising spontaneously, and I had some dissociative feelings. For example, when I moved my arm, it didn't feel like I was moving my arm, but rather that an arm was moving, if you understand what I mean.
My field of view also felt different. It was as if I were looking through a round window, and I was conscious of some of the nothingness around it. This took a few days to return to normal.
This is my memory of the experience, which is, of course, subject to some alteration over time. From what I understand about the jhānas, this could perhaps have been the second jhāna, but when I read descriptions of it, it doesn't really match.
For example, I wasn't clear-headed at all; I felt completely swept up in the experience. Also, would you describe sukha as "love" in your experience? For me, that's what it felt like.
That said, I also had a strong desire for unconditional love because I grew up with dysfunctional parents who were neglectful (they did the best they could). I have a feeling that, because of this desire, I may have been especially drawn to this feeling.
I also tried to talk to the monks about it, but I don't think I was able to explain myself very clearly, and they were kind of dismissive. In a"Ah, yes, something happened. Now go split some more wood" kind of way.
So, yeah, since I want to get back into spiritual practice, I would be very grateful if you have any thoughts or can point me toward any suttas regarding what happened here.
I see this moment as the greatest moment of my life, like a shining star in the firmament of my past. But, like many stars, its light is now just a memory.
Thank you very much for reading.