Rapid eye movement during meditative/trance states

I haven't recently really sat down and devoted all my focus into meditation or just whatever rhythm I felt, and had an interesting experience this evening. It was all relatively quick, over in about 10 minutes, just a few minutes ago.

I closed my eyes and sat in a slouchy lotus position and willed relaxation and good healing energy over my body and then out to the universe as well. I sent love and an invitation to communicate with me in positive ways to anything that was listening. I've done this occasionally in the past but never with this much conviction. And I've not had any otherworldly contact experiences before.

I decided to 'sing' a song with thoughts to go along with the invitation and did so. Kinda weird but it was fun and I thought to the universe a cool song/expression of myself. Shortly after, I decided to focus my mind on my field of view, or mind's eye I suppose, I can't honestly tell you which because the darkness of the back of my eyelids seemed to match the darkness of my mind's eye. So I focused my attention there and saw some pulses of a strange shimmering darkness and my eyes started shaking in their sockets, kinda like REM.

I can vibrate my eyeballs on command but that's not the same feeling. In fact, I cannot figure out how to make my eyes do what they did using conscious control of my muscles.

I kept focusing and my eyes started to shake faster and further. I sent a reminder thought out that I am a peaceful and loving being and only will beings of love to the universe and others to visit me. I returned to focusing and still my eyes kept violently shaking. I felt a very strange sensation, imagine you had a half inch thing strip of leather and wrapped it around your head, along your jawline and up over your head, and it was pulled slightly tight. The thin band of muscles which would be directly under that strip around my head were constricting themselves, such that it felt similar to, well, having a band wrapped around your head and pulled tight.

At this point, I opened my eyes and shook off my concern for what was happening to me.

I have felt this eye tremors thing before on a few occasions when I was meditating on similar things but this was, well, very interesting, and while I am not quite frightened, I am concerned and fascinated.

Can anybody relate to this experience and provide any insight to these sensations? Should I do this again and keep on going?

My eyes and the half inch ring of muscles vertically encircling my face are sore right now from how much they were tensing.

www.nlm.nih.gov...

Nystagmus is a term to describe fast, uncontrollable movements of the eyes that may be: Side to side (horizontal nystagmus) Up and down (vertical nystagmus) Rotary (rotary or torsional nystagmus) Depending on the cause, these movements may be in both eyes or in just one eye. The term "dancing eyes" has been used to describe nystagmus. Considerations The involuntary eye movements of nystagmus are caused by abnormal function in the areas of the brain that control eye movements. The part of the inner ear that senses movement and position (the labyrinth) helps control eye movements. There are two forms of nystagmus: Infantile nystagmus syndrome (INS) is present at birth. Acquired nystagmus develops later in life because of a disease or injury.

That's what it is. Although the article is incorrect, as it's something some people can learn how-to do. (Like myself)

You are correct that "focus" changes the speed of the eye movements. For me to trigger the movement, i de-focuse my eyes (like you're looking at a "magic eye" picture) then when they start to wiggle, attempting to refocus them will increase the speed/distance they wiggle.

reply to post by Evil_Santa


Thanks Evil_Santa, but I must say that I am well aware of the various forms of nystagmus and am able to produce them at will, but not what I experienced today.

What I experienced was very different and involved not my eyeballs looking around very fast, but my whole ocular region having its muscle tissue flex and unflex in swift patterns. I'm not sure what the names of the muscles are, but I'm talking eyelid muscles and the muscles immediately surrounding your eyeballs. Definitely not nystagmus, but I did describe it in similar terms.

Also, the band of muscles tightening around my head is very particular, but my guess would be those were my jaw muscles flexing hardcore for a while to the point that I felt them on the very top of my head.

PS: another cool face muscle trick I have been doing forever and is kinda fun is, well, you know when you yawn and sometimes hear a rushing sound in your inner ear? I think it's like blood vessels being opened when you flex a muscle or something like that - but anyways you can control that muscle and do that whenever. The muscle feels to me to be towards the back of the throat/neck, but that's just my guess based on the sensation I feel when I flex it. Or more correct, them, there is one muscle on each side of the face.

I have had this exact same experience happen to me. Perhaps not the same muscles. However, during meditation, my eyelids flutter. The deeper I go, the faster they can flutter, and it gets to a point where I do not have any control. They flutter so fast that It feels like they are no longer moving. While this is happening, I am shooting upwards like a rocketship, through different levels of consciousness. It took me to a level, in which I could see synchronicity. I could see how thoughts, each one, goes out into the world and affects everyone. How one bad thought can create suffering for others, all the way around the world. This synchronicity was visual, and felt, at the same time, it was a great revelation. I think the fluttering of eye lids, or eye muscles, has to do with triggering the third eye, which allows us to go into other realms of existence.

reply to post by tetsuo


I've studied and practiced meditation for years: with books, personal experimentation, and under the tutelage of so-called experts.

By all accounts, the goal is to produce a stillness of the eyes. We enter dream states, REM, to resolve stress. The restlessness of the eyes during meditation is also a sign that you're holding on to too much stress. Any impending urgency to move during meditation is a sign of stress.

I believe this is just a tell-tale sign that you're still resolving a few things "within."

The goal should be stillness.

Just my experience and my personal opinion.

reply to post by xxshadowfaxx


Thanks for your reply, xxshadowfaxx. I am going to try and continue on this path and see where it takes me. I just didn't want my eyeballs to explode, hehe. It feels like I am unable to route this energy correctly and it is relieving itself via my eyes. Best of vibes to you

reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha


Thanks Narco-Buddha, I understand stillness is desired in many cases, but I think maybe my objective last night wasn't so much falling into the void but to connect with other energies "out there" moreso that "in here". I had no control over the movements at the time. I sometimes do meditations with stillness and effortlessness as the objective but this wasn't one of those times. Perhaps I need more of that type of focus (or lack of focus, teehee) on effortlessness in order to properly route whatever energies made their way into my eyes last night. Thanks for your reply, fellow conscious entity

Something like this happened to me before.Years ago i laid down while i was aware of my surroundings.Like i was hearing the the keyboard hitting sound or the tv.

I was sleepy,but i was focused,on the physical plane...i started to hear some kind of static like sound in my head,i felt my head is working like a tv or radio with tuner so i focused on forward to it.
My eyes were closed at that time.

A few seconds later my eyes started to shake wildly it was like electricity went through them,and made them vibrate.I had no control on them but i didnt mind.I also felt a kind of a head-press on the back of my head that made me think i had muscles in my skull i never knew.

Well after that in the same moment this occured,i started to see a place filled with light where a man sitting before me talking.I couldnt hear his words,but i could say it was like a film going on in my head and i was still aware i was in my body.

I cant exactly remember more details and i dont want to mix disinfo into my story.

I can only encourage you to continue with your practice.Maybe someday you will be able to use your head to things like this....

I was meditating today and a similar experience, I was lying down in bed and I completely let go of all conscious thought. I put all of my focus on the back of my eye lids and after leaving my mind quiet and blank for a bit I began going into REM. I activated this using a technique I had learned from inducing Lucid Dreams. After completely relaxing and letting go, I will start to see something flashing, sometimes it has appeared as door or a windo w. It will be small at first, but I lock my eye's on and in doing this it will start to come into focus and near me. As this happens it the image becomes my entire vision and it feels like I'm passing through a tunnel and then brought into a Lucid Dream. Today's experience was similar to this, but I what I saw behind my eye's actually looked like eye's, as if it were my subconscious looking back at me. As I kept complete focus on them with an empty mind I went into REM, my entire body felt like it was expanding, my heart rate had increased dramatically, and I found it hard to breathe. I kept myself in this stance for what certainly felt like several minutes. The biggest challenge I found was to keep myself breathing without losing my train of thought. Which is interesting concept, trying to remember to think of nothing, not even the idea of nothing.

I would think that this could be used for entering into a dream state at will, and I'll be putting more effort in seeing how far I can go with this.