Posted by nevermnd
(here)
A big thanks from me to all of you that keep sharing your personal experiences in this thread.
I will be the first to say that I was pretty hesitant to the idea of meditation at first.
... I was relaxed, grounded and focus on stillness but all I saw was darkness, without any particular feeling associated with it.
It's also worth mentioning that stillness in meditation feels to me like some sort of tinnitus - which in western medicine is a rather a negative medical condition related to one's hearing.
At this point I stopped worried about how the stillness "should" feel like (thanks for the warning on that earlier on) and just accepted what I'm experiencing now and focus on that feeling/sound.
About two weeks ago I switched from doing the exercise #24 to Feeling the Aliveness question. At first couple of tries, it was more of the same, it felt just "OK", I was grounded, focused on the stillness but nothing would come. Then for the first time I started to see an orangy-red color, coming from the bottom of my peripheral vision - it felt warm and cozy. I got "there" by repeating in my mind "how does it feel to be alive" over and over and over again.
I do my meditation in a semi comfortable foldable "camping chair"

in front of the window that faces west. About 10 days ago I came home and really wanted to do Feeling the Aliveness again. It was early evening, very cloudy - almost overcast weather outside. I sat down as usual, grounded myself and started to focus on the breath (that's how I get to stillness fairly quickly). I was sitting there facing the window with my eyes closed for about 20 minutes, I kept asking "how does it feel to be alive" and finally, something happened. I could feel on my face that the clouds were breaking and the sun was slowly coming out starting to shine directly on my face. It was during that moment that I felt the happiest joy that I ever experienced to date. It lasted very short amount of time, probably 2 seconds or less.
I think a lot of you know the "normal" feeling when on the overcast day the sun unexpectedly breaks through the clouds and start shining directly on your face - it feels good and warm, if you multiply that feeling by 100, that's about what I felt at that time, during meditation with my eyes closed.
After the initial surge of joy, I saw a glimmering white light, It felt like I was a point suspended in the huge bright white vast space that had no end. There was no horizon line, no ground and no sky just that white light everywhere. After a little while I started to loose my focus, and I felt like I was "falling" down the colors, very similar to the feeling of falling down straight on your back when you are about to fall asleep or are waking up. I don't remember what was the order of those colors, but I did managed to re focused for one last moment and stopped at the color of light purple / pink. It was the same feeling of vast space as before. I even remembered at that time to say in my mind "awareness now" and "clarity now" but nothing happened. I soon started to fall through the blue color and finally down to the grey at which point I opened my eyes and saw, that indeed the sun broke through the clouds and was just starting to set on the horizon.
I also would like mention that just like teradactyl mentioned earlier, every time I write these posts here, my ego is telling me that what I wrote is "stupid" and I should not click send

Off it goes!