# What Happens when you Meditate for 10-16 hours per day for Five Months: Part 1 **Channel:** Ishtar Howell **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUSAKFCBI6k **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/rUSAKFCBI6k ## Chapters - 0:01 — Introduction and Continuous Samadhi Experience - 4:44 — Deepening Clarity and Dream Expansion - 8:55 — Lucid Dream Wisdom and Sleep Awareness - 11:49 — Practice Recommendations and Gear Analogy ## Transcript **[0:01]:** So I'm going to talk about my meditation training, what it's like to meditate for 10 to 12 hours a day for months on end. I'm going to have to break this up into a few videos because it would be a very, very long video and I can't be bothered to make scripts for these things. I just have to talk to the mic and see what comes out as if I'm talking organically to a friend. So this is a big rewind on the timeline for me. I did my meditation teacher training from the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004. **[0:38]:** I was graciously allowed to do a work exchange program to pay my fee for, you know, basically being out out of the world for six months. And so I worked for 18 months, often very hard as I was. I was deeply appreciative of the offer. And so when I got, got to the, when I got to the program, I think I was really well cooked and ready. So let's go into what the hell happens when you meditate for 10 to 12 hours a day, every day, sometimes 16 hours, depends on how much you sleep. So that's one thing that we're going to get to. And first off, I mean, I should qualify. You're probably going to get different results from different types of meditation practices. And some meditation practices might be better for you dispositionally than others, you know, so that, that's nothing account for. **[1:29]:** But supposing that you have a meditation practice that really suits you and, and, and really takes you very, very easily into samadhi, that's what we'll talk about. **[1:43]:** Oh, let's see. What is the first thing that happened? Well, I already, at that point, I already knew I already had conscious experiences of samadhi. So for those not familiar with a Sanskrit term, samadhi is essentially the word that we might ascribe to the experience of the. Now Patanjali has a very fine definition from his Yoga sutras, which is consciousness with its movement stilled. **[2:12]:** It is the silence. It is, it is the presence. It is the space where the perceiver melts into the perceived. It is the atrium of all of our nervous system, the quiet, infinite, vast silence. And that silence can coexist with dynamic activity, can coexist with dreams, with a sleeping state, all sorts of things. **[2:39]:** So I already had an experience of that. And one of the big interesting milestones is that it started to be there no matter what. Previous to that, it was something that I kind of, if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or got put there in the day, if something stressful came up, it would be as if I was well kicked out of that space. And I would have to close my eyes in meditation or do something to kind of of clear the disturbance out of the nervous system. Something, you know, there was very much a yo yo effect going out of it sometimes well out of it, doing things that would bring you back, etc. Etc. In this training I could get perturbed, you know, I could, at least in my head could get bothered and it would still be there. **[3:37]:** I could even sort of try to distract myself at a certain point, like, you know, do multiplication tables or try to rile myself up and it would still be there, it'd still be sitting in the background. That was fascinating. That related to that. I started to notice that, say I'd be sitting at a dinner table. We usually had a big sort of picnic style dinner table, 17, 18 people at dinner every night. And what's. What I started to notice was that there was no difference between me and the other people. I mean, I could still notice someone sitting over here, someone sitting over here, you know, the food goes from point A to point, mouth, all that kind of stuff. **[4:24]:** But functionally, when there'd be conversations, it was often as if they were happening inside me and I was out in the other people. Now, not all the time. Sometimes it could again frazzled tension, whatever, certainly would be there and that would dim that. But that was interesting. **[4:44]:** Then I also started to notice that it was as if there was some aspect of my consciousness. **[4:52]:** I mean, I can't say that it was spatially behind my body because that's not exactly the right way of saying it. But those are the words I would have used at the time to describe a sense of some part of my consciousness being forever sort of back, you know, sort of sort of in a place where it was completely unperturbed and always reminded me of T.S. eliot's quip of the still point and the turning axle of the world. That got very deep and in that space there was such clarity. It's like sitting in a place where you could have an extremely noisy room. **[5:29]:** You could even have an extremely busy body and nervous system, personally. And it was pristine there. And it's like the noise on the surface, you could hear a pin drop. It was as if I was at the bottom of Lake Geneva, the lake I grew up on in. And my friends could have been up on the pier kicking their legs, doing whatever, and I could be sitting down at the Bottom watching it all quiet. **[6:00]:** So witnessing consciousness, as it's called in the trade, that started to become very, very apparent. And I have to say that if that's not a regular fixture of consciousness, meditation retreats of that kind can certainly expedite it. Next thing is that that witness started to expand into dream and sleep, which was wonderful. I got to check the time here on this video. Okay, we'll go a little bit longer, we'll see how many of you have even at this point. **[6:37]:** That was interesting because since that witness being there in the dreaming state, functionally at a certain point, maybe three months in, I think I'm counting the months here, maybe three, maybe four months in, it was lucid dreams every time. **[6:57]:** Now some of those lucid dreams I completely wasted on the kind of activities you would expect a 20 year old male to waste them on. Others became much more interesting Once I got through the sort of let's waste these lucid dream, lucid dreams on sybaritic pleasure phase. Then it was interesting encounters with the archetypes of consciousness. One in particular I remember very well. This was like more of a passive lucid dream. Some of those other ones, especially the time wasters, were active lucid dreams, but this was kind of more of a passive one. And in this passive lucid dream, I ran into a being that I just knew. I don't think they presented themselves, but I knew that they were essentially like my conscience. They were very Jiminy Cricket, like we'll put it that way. And actually they did go by Virgil. **[7:48]:** So that was a tip off because of course Virgil is the conscience or the psychopomp in Dante's Divine Comedy, you know, leading him around. So, and I'd read that book, so that's why I knew that was my, my own guide. And so Virgil, you know, took me said, he said, we're going to go to the boiler room of your psyche now. I said, oh, that's great. And it was literally like a wonderful boiler room with all these, you know, wheels and levers and dials and stuff like that. **[8:17]:** And you know, he said, okay, so you just know, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna just turn that one over there. And I would just do that. So, okay, so you're never gonna be afraid of this again. I don't even know what I was afraid of, but I was never afraid of it again. **[8:31]:** And apologies if I've told this story already. And the next was I had a terrible at that time, it was a hair trigger thing. I Had a terrible gag effect. It was so bad, it was very psychological thing. So bad that I couldn't wear a mouth guard playing sports without puking. **[8:51]:** So, yeah. And Virgil said, let's fix that for you. **[8:55]:** And so I turned to lever. For some reason, that was my cue to wake up. And he said, you know, I'll see you again. I've never gone back into that. I should go back to the boiler room of the psyche sometime. It's a real quick way to. To heal things. And. And so then I woke up from that and I. I just had to test it out. And I said, so I just started very, you know, putting my finger in my mouth to see if the gag would come, because it did. Even if I knew I was doing it, I know nothing happened. I was like, whoa. I said, okay, how far can I really stick it down? I ended. I stuck this thing down my throat as far as I possibly could. And I was running around the darkened nighttime early morning halls of our little church ashram, you know, just excited as anything. **[9:47]:** So, you know, that was. That was part of the dreams. More interesting in the dreams was that in some of those lucid dreams, I started to experience myself as essentially one with all life, which is very interesting. **[10:03]:** Didn't really stick that much. I couldn't say it stuck much into my waking experience with the teacher training. I was, you know, I think pretty up and down, but that was going on. And then at a certain point, and this was sort of in the final months a little bit, I started to experience being completely awake during sleep, which I found fascinating, but I also didn't like. And what was that like? How do you know? How could. If you're awake during sleep, aren't you just not asleep? No, I say that's not the case. I would ask that question myself, honestly. But how to describe. There was an awareness that wasn't of the mind, which sounds strange as well. There was an aspect of consciousness that is always aware, no matter what is going on in terms of the mind. And in the sleep state, I was even watching my mind, just like I watched my mind in the waking state from that still point in the turning axle of the world. **[11:05]:** In the sleeping state, there wasn't that much entertainment as far as the mind, because the mind was just going. **[11:13]:** It was like a strange, low droning sound. And that does remind me of Patanjali, who also says that in his yoga sutras that sleep is the thought of nothing. Not true, nothing. The thought of nothing. And so having that experience, I was like, Good Lord. **[11:35]:** Patanjali's right. This is not true transcendence in sleep. It's just kind of one stupid low maintenance drone thought. And it's like, okay. And so I basically, you know, for some nights would sit. **[11:49]:** Find myself sitting in that awareness with going on above. And that was, that was very interesting. And I think that might. We'll end this video because it's pretty long right now. Oh my God. 12 minutes. **[12:05]:** Needless to say, the I'll be back with another installment of sort of things in from meditation retreats and teacher trainings. And you know what would be the main idea of this persistent awareness. **[12:19]:** Persistent awareness. Whether you're running, walking, talking, eating, having sex, doing yoga, dreaming, sleeping. That's a thing, you know, and it's not something that you make happen by force. You know, some people do that. You know how these meditations were like walking, walking, drying, drying. **[12:44]:** There could be some use to those. So I'm kind of caricaturing them. Maybe that's unfair. I did those beforehand and I have to say I don't think that's a great way to culture witnessing this witness that came about through this interesting immersive program. This is there already. **[13:03]:** This is already awake. It's a light that's already on and getting there through straining and concentration, like I'm going to be aware that I'm sitting, sitting. I don't think that's. That's the best way at all. To get there better is to relax your nervous system. **[13:23]:** Down, down, down, down, down. You relax, you relax, you relax, you relax some more. And you start to get to a point where you become, your consciousness becomes subtle enough that you can kind of sort of merge with the subtler gears of consciousness that are already there. And that's a good analogy if you want to throw in your back pocket is to think of our nervous system like a bicycle with many gears and that mainly we're trained out of. You know, our training only trains us in waking, sleeping and dreaming gears. **[14:00]:** In our society, we're typically not well trained to access the other gears that are already there. You know, you kind of have to go off script civilizationally. You have to step out and go be a weirdo, usually to reorient yourself with those other gears. But that's exactly what happens in that sort of program is you have the time and space to go first connect with gear number four, which is samadhi. And once in gear number four, gear number four isn't. **[14:31]:** Gear number four opens up into some other gears. You know, there's more there. Gear number four has many, many, many secrets, open secrets. And so, yeah, that's essentially what's going on there, is discovering that that awareness, it's just always hanging right here, right now. All we have to do is just meet it. **[15:01]:** So pleasure talking to you today. If you like this video, please do subscribe. More than that, leave a comment. I like to answer comments when I have time, and I think I have time these days. So see you later.