Meditating on tiredness and delusion.

[Dustin Driscoll]

I am not new to meditation but for the last several months every one of my meditations leads to tiredness to such a strong degree of become delusional. My mind becomes filled with that simi awake simi asleep state regardless of how much sleep I get. I try being kind to it just allowing it but it always ends in me being half asleep inside of weird dream like states. This has been happening for so long that I'm not sure what to do. Should I just accept it and hope one day it clears up? All things are in permanent but I feel like in this situation I'm not doing something right.

To clarify this is much more than just sloth and torper. When one has to pull an all nighter and gets into that delusional awake yet dreaming state is what I get in the first 5 minutes every day.

[Mara Pacers]

Greetings Dustin
I'm sorry I can't answer your question, but there are many experienced meditators who come to this forum who may be able to. Also you can post this question in the 'Ask a monastic' section of the forum as well.

with metta

M

[Jerrod Lopes]

Dustin,

Try walking meditation for a little while, maybe a week. See how that goes. For sitting meditation, balance a cup of water on your head, or sit on the cover of a tank of snakes. Best of luck. Nice to see you here.

[Dustin Driscoll]

What has me thrown off is I'm not experiencing any nodding. I'm not falling asleep but rather my mind enters a very strange and weird dream like abstract state. I feel as though it is a reflection that's telling me I'm over stimulated over worked and over doing it. Might need to take some time off work and time off from the family to just rest and meditate to get some simple stillness back in my life.

[Jerrod Lopes]

Either way, it comes down to a lack of focus. What is your meditation object; the breath, a pebble on the floor? It sounds, given your brief description, that your meditation object(s) is primarily the visual aspects of your thoughts. If so, that's a losing proposition from the start. Start from the beginning. Take a few good cleansing breaths, take as much time as you need to get comfortable, then turn all focus and mindfulness to your meditation object. Forget anything else until you can sustain focus. Everything else falls in line accordingly. Start by meditating for maybe only 2 or 3 minutes at a time. Be well.

[Dustin Driscoll]

I've been meditating on my breath for a long time and have taken it into very deep states. I imagine I could always focus more yet I think it might be something more. I'll have, what I consider, strong focus on my breath then I justslip into a very strange and abstract state in which focus can't happen. I think I'm going to try a little subtle force with it. I know what happened in the past doesn't mean much but for a long time I could use my breath to go into very wonderful deep states.

[Gayathri Wijesinghe]

Hi,
you have probably sorted out this issue by now. However if there are others who are having this issue I thought of posting a response. Ajahn Brahm advises that whenever we encounter a problem in meditation to look at which of the 5 hindrances it relates to (sometimes more than one hindrance could be in effect). In your case the blanking out maybe due to dullness, or sloth and torpor or a number of other hindrances such as wanting certain states you had in the past. Look up how to address this in the following document provided by Ajahn Brahm:
https://bswa.org/teaching/the-five-h...y-ajahn-brahm/

Sometimes you you may find that your body is actually tired and sleep deprived despite sleeping. It maybe that your sleep is not restorative or you could be having an illness such as Adrenaline/chronic fatigue, over stressed at work or maybe you think too much and your thoughts are consuming a lot of your energy. You may find it helpful to practice mindfulness during daily activities and pay attention to the quality of mindfulness (is your mind still wandering away), perhaps do loving kindness meditation prior to breath meditation to increase energy and increase present moment awareness, Body sweeping with kindfulness may also help to identify any tiredness in the body. Perhaps doing the body sweeping practice suggested by the late Ayya Khema may help to sharpen the awareness:
https://youtu.be/CPAJkaY2l0w

Whatever the problem is be kind to it, accept it and know that it will pass. If the problem persists then maybe it is time to get help from a monastic.
with metta