Expert: Joe McSorley - 3/20/2009

Question
I have been meditating three hours daily for eighteen years.  I wanted to get your viewpoint on the landscape of that period.  I will be brief.  
First started I saw a white light and was deeply transformed by it. radical personality change.
five years later it happened again even more powerfuly and left me changed again deeply.  Lots of compasion some supernatural phenomena like healing ability and visions.
I still had some deep emotional wounds after these two major experiences.
four years later all joy and felt experience went away and i felt completely disconnected for a year while deep pain emerged and released from me.  A deep peace set in after another year or so and the light or joy or powerful presence began to come back but never as wildly intense as before but a lot more stable.  Is it normal for it to mellow out over time?  I have been told that it is but once in a while i wonder about that.  I am much more stable and peacefull and consistently compassionate and present than i was in the early years but there is less power too, and less miracles.  what do you have to say about all of this?  thank you for your time.

Answer
Hello Clinton,
   The first thing I would like to make very clear is that I am not a Roshi and therefore not an expert on meditation.  Meditation, as I was taught it, was very arduous with only one focus; to overcome self.  I know that there are many teachers out there who do not teach it this way and I find some of their teachings problematic.  My teachers were vehement about disregarding anything spiritual or seemingly super human that would come up because they were seen as distractions and illusions.  At one point in my practice I was overcome by an extreme experience of unity and clarity yet both of my teachers slapped it down as “not good enough” and urged me onwards. To me it was the ultimate realization but to them it was still in the dualistic matrix of human consciousness. One teacher told me that most are satisfied by this experience and therefore do not push onwards to real awakening and that it could be a pitfall. I was also warned of the highs and lows of meditation and that to be aware that psychological manifestations were not to be confused with awakening.  Thus, “mind and body fallen off” was always stressed.  With mind and body fallen off there is no place for those feelings to cling or the dichotomies of joy and sorrow.
So my dealings with meditation appear to be different from yours and I don’t know what help I can give you here.
   In general I have found that as I age and as my practice in both Zen and martial arts has matured that the so-called ‘fantastic’ experiences of my youth have given way to a deeper and quieter awareness. Meditation is no different from daily life. We become the meditation so it is no longer a practicing of it but a living dynamic thing. This might be a mellowing or a maturing, I don’t know, but as an example, in the martial arts it has settled in my bones and beyond my mind.  It is not something I do anymore, it is something I am and have no consciousness of , perhaps your meditation has taken the same route with you.
 I am sorry I could not be of more help.
              Joe