So, up to about age five, i remember vividly this feeling that i could only compare to a ball spinning around a hole very fast and it would almost fall in the hole but never did, it was flung out sideways. This was during deep dreamlees sleep, (i had access to the deep dreamless state until around age 7, i had no way to differentiate any of this naturally, it just felt normal) but i was wondering if i was experinceing the early early stages of involution where i was goin from this completely forless spirit and then coming into manifestation gradually. (by the way i was wondering if that is where the term "spiral out" comes from, cuz it really fely like a spirialing effect.) well was hoping someone could shed some light on what that was, spiral out lol - chris

Chris, I don't know about the consciousness even in retrospect for me of deep dreamless sleep, but I did have an odd and perhaps similar experience with the spinning. When I had my tonsils taken out and I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, as I was going under from the ether that they administered through a face mask, I had this extraordinary vertiginous feeling as I spun out, flung far, into an increasingly greying darkness and apparently infinite space. The feeling in the gut was similar to having gone very high on a swing, and staying at that funny 'G' place for ever unto unconsciousness, not to be confused with other G spots, but what do I know. ambo

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Ambo Suno

was it laughing gas? cuz that stuff is awesome, my parents are dentists so i got to use it some and it is the funniest stuff. Not sure if it's addictive, but if not, it should definitly made legal. Funny story actually. My friends friend and all his roomates lived together in an apartment and for one week we were always just cracking up and thought they all got funnier somehow, but then a exterminiation man came for a bug problem and discovered there was a laughing gas leak and had to break it to the group that, they weren't all funnier, it was just a gas leak.

That's a good story. I've never had nitrous oxide - I'm guessing that's what you had.

Ether is what was used before more sophisticated anesthetics came out. You'd inhale it and do the classic counting back from 100. In the tonsil story above, it didn't feel like a laughing matter - poignant, 'yes', quasi dreadful, 'yes', funny ha ha, NOT. Ether is also the main ingredient in many cold engine starting products. Whoops.

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Ambo Suno

o ya, i think thats the stuff that hitmen and assassin's use when they sneak up on an unsuspecting victim and hold it over their mouth 'till there out for the count. I can gladly say I've never had that. But yes, I'm talking about nitrous oxide, which would probably work on henchmen too and be fun for everyone.

hi chris,
well I never did laughing gas, but I remember having this odd experience when I was a child (must be around age five or little older), usually it appeared when I was sick in bed, with fever, and only when I had my eyes closed. How can I describe this? - well there were no spinning balls in it - it was more like an amorphous blob, constantly changing, with spikes coming out of it now and then. The surface was very smooth, but under it there were these spikes and other unpleasant edgy things... does this make any sense?! maybe I just visualized the virus that my body was fighting with, maybe it was something like a involution memory, I can't tell. Well I was a strange kid, that's for sure...:-)

best to you,
witz

Victims, henchmen and wasps. I've used the cold start spray on a small nest of wasps that was taking up residence on my front porch a long time ago. It put them down for awhile, as I removed the nest, but then later they got up off the floor and began to fly.

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Ambo Suno

ya its weird and hard to describe, but i dont think anyone remebers their involution like i feel i really did, basically coming from the complete nondual state and then the feeling of gradually meshing with the world of form, and according to the WC lattice, I would figure I had a nondual state experience at a magic stage (remember this state vividly at age 12) but being at such a low stage w/ those state experinces (seriously it was like the whole "you dont see the clouds, you are the clouds, you are everything that arises moment to moment, yada yada"),and w/ out being able to differentiate the experince...I dont know if you could imagine how many problems I ran into down the road.

That really is interesting. Those ages you mention in your first post, 5 and 7 and then remembering at 12 take me to a feeling of empathic poignancy. I don't understand all of what you are describing as involution and deep dreamless sleep and might have to ask questions to get to where I could understand, imagine how many problems issued apparently from this process, and say more. Though you may be speaking of it with some ambivalence on this thread, I can say that this all feels quite rich and fortunate thus far to me from a distance.

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Ambo Suno

I'm also not completely sure what I mean by involution (just always thought the term meant spirit getting lost in manifestation, unable to differentiate) but I do remember retaining a subtle awarness 24/7 for quite a long period (can't nail down exactly how long), I remember the feeling of watching my dreams, then watching my entire mind fall out into this infinite space where I would reside and construct the most wonderful scenarios and adventures with my wild young imagination. Then the morning dream started and then then the entire gross realm would reassemble as it was time to wake up and go to school. The experience at 12 was exactly how I wrote about it, I simply saw through the dream, awareness was self aware and self liberating.

So all that, I do remember. Not really relevent but a reacurring dream that stuck out was one where I was quitley meditating near a river with green grass all around and absolutly everything was brillently illuminated, so I think I was quite the meditator in a past life, and btw another thing is how sure I am that I consiously reincarnated, this is based off the early feeling of "I'm back...in this endless, wonderful game, and I'm right where I need to be...I made it" Plus I later found out that my dad was among the early group of people who studied Wilber and Integral ideas, so I believe that had a lot to do with the choice.

(sidenote: not sure how much of my story you wanted to hear, so I'm just gonna unleash basically all of it)

There was no way I could verbalize any of this and besides how would I, it was all I had known, I thought it was normal and everyone else had access to this too. It was so simple and obvious that I didn't even think of talking of it. It was not until I was 19 that I even remembered/differentiated these early experiences for the first time.

So there enlies where some problems arose down the road. Not sure how interdependent the events of my teens were or if they were just teenage mistakes (I'm 20 now) but I had a people pleasing pathology (I strove to maintain group harmony at all costs, trying to be friends with everyone, having so many different groups of friends, even succumbing to tons of peer pressure and doing drugs and other activities that messed me up mentally and physically.)

So from these pathologies things went from bad, to the most traumatic period of my life (traumatic to the point where I was certain no one had ever experieinced anything like it ever, pretty sure others have now) So it was the 3 year period, 17-19. I was already in my unstable mental and physical state and had this hero complex where I saw it as a sign of weakness to express to others how I felt (sure a lot of this was installed by society and how guys should act) even though I am a very sensitive person. So I leave for college in San Diego, sdsu, being very unstable. I was even questioning whether everything was a dream or not for the first time, on the first day of moving into the dorms.

My first week of school...identity shattered, out of body experiences, entire body tightening with extreme anxiety, all while my people pleasing and hero complex are still in full swing. That is to say I was still doing unhealthy things such as smoking pot (even though I never had a good time smoking it, got anxious and a dry mouth everytime but faked that I was having a good time) all in hopes of making sure people liked me, and didn't judge me.

This is when I first started reading Wilber as my dad had given me "The Simple Feeling of Being" (a compilation of his works) as a graduation present. The irony of reading this book at the most traumatic time in my life is just priceless, I was looking way too deep into things, making them harder then they had to be, and becoming very irrtional in my thoughts and actions (actually lack of actions, such as not telling family what was really going on and not getting real help)

So although i should have come home in the first week, I stuck the whole year out, I eventually, gradually opened up to my parents later in the year with what was going on and got help once the pain had gotten to an absolutly unbearable point. School ends, summer begins, I've opened up some, but not completly, hero complex still in effect, I say "I dont need the stinking therapist anymore", we go on family vacations, hang out with friends, all while I'm becoming more and more detached from reality, more delusional.

The end all was when my dad sent me to a life workshop called Avatar where they basically try to get you do have spiriutual experinces and oh how I did. All of the "masters" their claimed to be "awake" but I could feel that they weren't, just that something was off (in one of Ken's talks with his "apprentice?" colin bigelow, he talks about how there are different "flavors" of enlightenment, that is to say that people can have this experince of "the one" but when that is over, finite personlity traits, etc., remain. Colin shares how important it is for the student to be able to test the teacher, and these teachers at Avatar were not open to being tested whatsoever) So no one was really getting through to me and I was utterly confused b/c these "masters" had good intentions but couldnt see their own problems w/ their premature claims to enlightenment, except for one dude. So I did this session with one guy and we created this peak experince that was just out of this world. Like I saw through his eyes a perfect reflection of myself (which is how a good teacher should be) and in that reflection I was overwhelmed by what I saw and let out this war-like cry, this loud yell of feeling completely exposed and then immediaty contacting. That grabbed the attention of everyone in the room. So anyways I get back from the seminar and my "bipolar" episode begins, I wrote it all out just b/c it helped me sort things out but dont expect anyone to read it, if you do give yourself a huge pat on the back.

http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/53593.aspx

The gist (jist?) of it though is that I became extremely delusional, was up all night writing irrational things, drinking tons of water, in the morning I had an hallucination, thought i was in an alternate universe, started walking outside, thinking that all my old friends lived right next to me so i wanted to see them. My parents deemed me dangerous, took me the the emergency room, I conitued my psychotic break their until I got the Haldol injection and went nigh night.

(taken form that previous thread) After the episode there were definitly still some delusional days that followed, but in decreasing severity, not exciting enough to mention.

The 72 hour hold, then the out patient group therapy for 3 months and then the therapy i do once a week now plus the lamictal mood satbillizing medication from the psychiatrists because of the bipolar diagnosis and i’m feeling really good and rational. I'm researching spiritual emergence/ies because I believe that was/is the case. It was relativly fast recovery due to my great family support and therapists and such.(I had this episode in august, turned 20 in september and feel remarkably better now)

Hoping to get off these meds in a year too as more light is shined on the question of BP vs. SE. (Debated this topic in this thread - http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/30681.aspx )

So ya, that brings me up to date, seeing a transpersonal psychologist, taking stabliizing medication to keep me grounded, at home for this year to recover and planning to go back to SDSU in the fall. I do enjoy telling the story now, I see it as quite a chapter in my life book. And I'm really coming to terms w/ all of it finally, like realizing that although I was dumb, everything I did seemed like the right thing to do at the time, I had my reaosns that did seem rational at the time, so I just learn from all that and move on. Move on wiser, stronger, and with stronger morals. wow - Chris

Chris, that is an interesting story. Where my original curiosity had more to do with "involution" and "deep dreamless sleep" and more of your retrospective evolving sense and understanding of that period, you laid out much more. I think I read about your 'bipolar' time before and your interest in the Aussie who looked at and supported 'bipolar' very differently.

I don't have a good understanding of "involution" either, so I place an AQAL glossary definition here:
involution
1. The enfolding and “involving” of the higher dimensions into the lower, depositing
themselves into the lower as potentials ready to unfold into actuality through
evolution.
2. Loosely, any movement from the higher to the lower in a holarchy.

I personally also don't know about deep dreamless sleep; other than simply what I've read regarding it's status as a "state" and a few related ideas.

What strikes me in general about us people is that there are so many ways that we can interpret events and tell our stories, and it seems that some parts of our stories stay the same for a while and sometimes they change. For me, I have uncertainty as to whether to attribute a vignette in my life to a spiritual expression or a psychological one. I have tended to have a fairly strong thread of psychological-mindedness running through me, so often that is what I default to; I think that this variably insistent default dynamic in me may have limited and does limit me at times. I suppose it could be the other way around too for some people that there are so many available spiritual ideas in the air and environment that we default to those that we know to construct a story; maybe questioning whether more ordinary material childhood influences and dynamics would restore reality balance to those stories for those people with that tendency.

I have also tended to understand and story-line most events and circumstances in first tier language, so again I apparently have been quite limited.

If I had a couple of dentist parents, who I stereotype as having plenty of income, I would love to get them to fund some various expensive 'therapies' for me. I think I'd like to find a contemporary psychoanalyst (again) who I liked, trusted enough, who seemed to have plenty of room in their world views for unknowns, transpersonal possibilities, who didn't tend to hammer too quickly the variably shaped pegs of my experience into fixed and elegant geometric shaped holes of their understanding. Maybe, if they seemed quite wise and respectfully tentative over some time, I'd appreciate a tap here and there. I'd go several times a week. Some years ago, I did about 4 days a week for a year with a good man who is now deceased. I think I may limit myself in the demanding parameters that I set for a therapist. That's my story and I'm not sticking to it.

Thanks for sharing what I'll call the collage of your life, the mosaic in process, your story of the moment.

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Ambo Suno

Yes, it is definitly tricky to pull apart what is a spiritual experince and what is psycholgical. So many different "chicken and egg" scenerios arise. Thats a very good, indirect, point about how my "spiritual" environment does effect how I view all my experinces and it is very healthy for me to get back to the basics, the root psychological problems.

I don't remember mentioning my parents or sterotyping them as having "plenty of money". I'm sure you could infer that they were dentists because of my username but I wouldn't say the latter. Of course you may be hypothetical.

And yes, definitly be that demanding with a psychologist, you're paying those people a lot of money. I got lucky and have one that is exactly as you described. No problem sharing, I enjoy empting my mind onto the internet.

Chris, I nod to all that you say here.

Sorry about my stereotyping test balloon. Though it usually bodes well financially to have two dentists in a family, that was a way indelicate stretch by me. Bowing with some chagrin.

Until you mention it now, I hadn't noticed the name. If I'd sussed that out, I'd be dammed near psychic. But actually you mentioned it above when you mentioned getting into the nitrous. "was it laughing gas? cuz that stuff is awesome, my parents are dentists so i got to use it some and it is the funniest stuff."

Cool on having a good therapist. Later.

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Ambo Suno