This is part of my Meditation Journal with dozens of posts >
Meditation Journal Entry about the Fatness Feeling
I meditated two nights ago on the futon in one of the bedrooms sitting crossed-legged. I sat and concentrated on breathing for about an hour with sporadic focused concentration. Then I heard the answering machine kick on without the phone ringing because we shut the ringer off. This caught my conscious attention and focused my mind away from the ‘task’ at hand –which was that I was trying to attain the same numb/fatness state that I had done on two previous occasions.
The instant after I focused on the machine I felt the numbness starting in my fingers and forearms. I just concentrated on the feeling and tried to experience it fully without losing it by attaching to it. The numbness/fatness continued for about 20 minutes.
I think it ended and didn’t go further because I was hoping however lightly that it would lead to the mind/body shape changing experience that I felt before. This attachment was just enough to keep the feeling I sought elusive and unrealized. I really need to just experience what is happening and not be focused on result.
I think I am just in such a state of amazement that the numbness/fatness/ etc. can happen– that I am focusing on it consciously too much and putting it thru my value system while it is happening. My future sessions need to not have any expectations. The way to non-expectation is through just experiencing the event, not concentrating on non-expectation.
Note – the numbness/fatness feeling was an odd feeling I felt as I woke up in the morning as a child and sometimes as an adult, though it did fade quite a bit in adulthood. It was a feeling as if the entire body was growing outward from all points equally and in unison. Like the body was blowing up like a balloon. Like it was no longer bound by skin. It was a very weird sensation that happened hundreds of times in my youth. Then later, I found that it could happen in meditation as well!