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I have a friend who's been meditating 2-3 hours a day for a few years now, and has somehow managed to never run into normal meditation knowledge at all. He'd never heard of Jhanas before! So I read him descriptions of the Jhanas to see he'd encountered them independently 1/

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

Nov 11, 2022

He related to some of the descriptions, but inconsistently. like first and second jhana he was like ??? never felt that, but I read third jhana and he was like oh yeah that sounds very familiar. overall he didn't find them to be much of a pattern match

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Not sure what this means, but it updates me slightly in the direction of "ppl who experience jhanas are doing so because they've been previously primed by hearing ppl describe jhanas'

2:23 AM · Nov 11, 2022

Replying to

I'm not sure I personally count cause I did most of my own meditation while on psychedelics, but I have spent very many hours in bizarre states, most of them before hearing about jhanas, and I also do not find the jhanas to be a natural description of anything I've experienced.

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Nov 11, 2022

tho mebbe u gotta do very specific jhana meditation to experience them, and it's not just something that happens to anyone who stares at their own mind enough?

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Nov 11, 2022

er to clarify: I was under the impression jhanas are supposed to be a progression, but he claimed to have experienced something that the third jhana description sounded like, but not the first two; maybe he did independently discover them, but not in order?

Replying to

Nah, I meditated for a decade with no prior priming or knowledge and the Jhanas were the first good description of what I had experience They track exactly a priori

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