Optional Bliss

In the past months I have had the following experience: I am dreaming that I am with a mentor figure who is showing me strange phenomena or explaining things to me. Sometimes there are three or four of them. Over the course of the dream, my sense of well-being increases to the point of being a pleasure. The feeling actually becomes one of ecstasy, and I can do nothing but experience it. Upon awakening, the feeling stays with me for up to ten minutes. It feels like a column of energy flowing upward through my body, causing all the tissues to tingle and vibrate. It is easily a Schedule I experience.

There is only one catch: I need to avoid negative thoughts the preceding day. I believe that most people think of themselves as positive-thinking, and that this should be no problem. But in that case, I think there would be a word for what I’m describing. Whatever people think is positive is not making this a common phenomenon.

I have also been able to achieve this state several times through intense meditation. The break-through came after five hours! I lay in bed awake for five hours and tried to imagine the feeling. Of course, my mind wandered and I found myself thinking about unpleasant things, but I toughed it out and stayed more or less faithful to the program. After the feeling started, it was very easy to stay positive and enjoy the high. It ended when exhaustion set in. I was too weak to get out of bed, and slept dreamlessly for a long time.

The second time I tried this, I got the high after only two hours. You’d think I’d meditate more often, with the hope of reducing my meditation time to twenty minutes, or something like that. It seems that I always have something “better” to do, although at the end of the week, I find myself wondering what could be better. I probably spend two hours per week looking at imgur pet postings, which is pleasant enough, but not as pleasant.

What can I conclude? This deeply blissful state is not worth the effort. On the face of it, this is just crazy. When I consider the people who are willing to ruin their lives for opiate highs, I see that they certainly spend more time managing their addiction than I do meditating.

What can I conclude? We are dark beings who prefer our darkness.

But now, having confessed this, I will try again.