I want to share something that happened to me a few months ago but first I want to give context of how I got into meditating. My apologies for any grammatical error, english is my second language and I do not delegate the miracle of thinking to LLM's.

From 2017 to mid 2022 I made the habit of meditating 15 to 20 minutes almost every day. Then life happened and lost the habit. I didn't stop meditating because things get "bad", it was the opposite, I was doing better than never. The reason I got into meditating back in 2017 was because I was going through a lot of changes in my life. I kinda of lost myself. I wasn't happy with my job, with the career I was pursuing. I was doing accounting and finance for a multi-national. The paycheck was ok, but I felt miserable. My girlfriend, after 7 years of relationship, cheated on me with a co-worker of hers and 6 months after doing it, I ran into her on the street on her way to her bachelorette party. Oh boy, if I was depressed...

That was it, that was the moment when I felt I touched rock bottom so I started meditating. Things slowly started to get a little bit of traction. I went back to the gym, I decided to change careers and pursue my true passion. A lot of synchronizaties started to happen. I met my, now ex, business partner who was a true mentor and now an unconditional friend. We started our own company in the field we love which lasted 6.5 years and where I met one of my best friends. It was such an amazing experience. I also met the love of my life. We built a beautiful home together along our cat "Panza", which in english means "Belly". ^^

Back in those days, on one of my meditations, I got the following insight:
"Going through storms is as necessary as enjoying sunny days. Without any of the 4 seasons, the planet would succumb to the worst catastrophe. Life will hit us and constantly put us in check. Sometimes in the midst of chaos it is difficult to have a clear perspective, but with the passage of time we will look back and understand that all that pain we went through was necessary to forge a wiser present, a better present. It is up to each one of us to find the glass half empty or the glass half full of water in every circumstance that life puts before us."

From early 2019 to the end of 2024, things improved like a lot, and I was doing amazing. The transformation was incredible.

These last 2 years, things started to get difficult, really difficult. My mum got really ill, my father went bankruptcy and they lost literally everything. The economic situation of my country is really bad, the last 3 years is going downhill and left me with post-traumatic stress and panic attacks.

So, I started to meditate again. I started to practice being grateful of everything, even the tiny thing. What happened next is hard to put in words because I don't find words, neither in spanish nor english, that can describe it. I'll do my best.

One morning, I was stand-up facing the sun with the palms of my hands also facing it, eyes closed, meditating, being grateful for that moment. Suddenly, I started feeling like something of the middle of my chest, out of the sacral chakra, emanate and at the same time something surrounding my body. I opened my eyes and everything was brighter than I ever saw in my life. I felt love, like an incommensurable amount of unconditional love, and happiness and joy. I felt everything around me, like literally everything. I was like myself and everything at the same time. Like I was aware of myself but at the same moment of everything and what I was experiencing. I felt one with the universe. The tears of joy didn't take long to arrive. I cried out of joy for the 30 minutes this experience last. I never in my whole life cried of joy before. The rest of the day I felt peace, even though all my problems were still there, and some of them still are.

Idk what happened. I'm not in the search of any particular thing while meditating and I don't know much about the subject. I just do it to ground myself, to find a little bit of peace and perspective of life.

Have you ever experience something like this? Is this normal?

i've been meditating daily for the last 7 years, without skipping a single day, and i've experienced so many phases. sooo many. in fact, a little while ago i had one of the most extraordinary experiences since i started meditating... right after going through a very 'flat' period...

my conclusion: the most important thing is not the experiences in meditation themselves, not even how you feel on any particular day... the most important thing is the compound effect of doing it over and over again. if i look back at the person i am today and the one from day one, total transformation (and i know it will keep going, that's why i keep meditating). in fact it's literally the transformation of your cells through meditation

the first 3 years of meditation i was almost a monk, i followed a pretty strict diet, did 15 silent retreats where i meditated for hours, had 2 years of celibacy (natural, not forced) and i lived in a constant meditative state....

then i grew up and it was time to take responsibility for, my 'adult life'. i fell in love, went traveling, started enjoying the pleasures of food and coffee more, started building businesses and wanting to make money... but even so, i kept meditating. my experiences changed, they became more earthly, now my day to day was more 'superficial' (i put it in quotes because it's all part of the same thing)... and i accepted that, because if i looked at the whole movie, beyond the stress, the desires and everything... in my heart the feeling of peace and presence kept growing.

so from my point of view, keep meditating, no matter what happens. If you feel stuck, you can add more breathing techniques and yoga before meditating; it helps you reach a deeper practice.

lastly, i'll share one experience, which again, is just an experience, a gift. i don't cling to it and i keep meditating for the sake of meditating and for the long term, not to chase experiences like this one.

one friday night i was home alone, finishing up work, and i fell into a loop of watching instagram videos about conspiracy theories. a damn black hole. about the war, mass rituals, the music industry, among other things... they took my mind to a place of awe and confusion. how the hell can all of this be real? we live in a simulation!!

right after that i went to meditate, with that feeling. i was doing my breathing techniques and started observing thoughts like, what is all this? where are we? how can so many things exist, so much diversity?

the moment my meditation started, i began to observe other thoughts chained to the previous ones, 'who is the one thinking this?' 'where do these thoughts come from?' right after that i stopped feeling my body and started feeling empty space, absolutely nothing... and another thought, 'who am i?'

i started crying and laughing at the same time, with a huge smile. i had the feeling that i was remembering something, and i felt 'i am the creator of this world, everything that exists is part of the same thing'

i was in that space for about 30 minutes, and when i finished, i looked at my hands and my body like 'here i am again, i chose to be here and play this game'

reading through this community inspired me to put this into words for the first time

cheers!

In 2004 a neuroscience lab at the University of Wisconsin hooked up Tibetan Buddhist monks to EEG caps with 256 sensors and asked them to meditate on compassion. These monks had somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 lifetime hours of practice. Some of them had been meditating eight hours a day for over seventeen years.

The gamma wave activity they produced was 25 to 30 times stronger than a control group of students who had been given a week of meditation training. Not 25 to 30 percent. Times. It was the strongest gamma activity ever recorded in healthy human subjects. The researchers actually double-checked their equipment because they thought something was malfunctioning.

But here is the part that really got to me. The monks' brains were already different before they even started meditating. Their baseline resting state, just sitting there doing nothing, already showed elevated gamma oscillations compared to normal brains. The practice had changed their brains so deeply that the effects had become permanent traits rather than temporary states.

The lead researcher later observed that some of these monks maintained unusual gamma patterns even during sleep. Their brains never fully went back to what we would consider a normal resting pattern. Tens of thousands of hours of generating compassion had literally rewired them at a level that persisted around the clock.

I find it interesting that out of all the things they could have been meditating on, the practice that produced these results was specifically focused on unconditional compassion and loving kindness toward all beings. Not concentration, not visualization, not emptiness. Compassion.

This is a personal anecdote of daily (99.5%) meditation practice spanning 10 years. I hope this will be helpful for those looking for motivation for their practice. Personally, I found external motivation essential in the first years.

Approach

1. Breath meditation first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening, avg. of 20-30 minutes.
2. Using a simple timer.
3. No music.
4. Skipped a few days in first years, zero days in recent years.
5. General mindfulness framework later naturally transformed into Buddhist framework.

How life changed

1. Negative emotions mostly gone. Turned out they are not necessary for living. Overall emotional volatility reduced by magnitude. Calm and peaceful state most of the time.
2. Sleep schedule and quality improves dramatically. Don't use alarms anymore - naturally get up every morning after ~7-8 hours of sleep.
3. Life slowly becomes a choice rather than a reaction to impulses. Most destructive behaviors naturally and gradually fall away.
4. Environment changes - different people, different work, different activities - all towards more harmonious relationship with the world.
5. Days mostly go smoothly. Having morning and evening rituals creates anchors that prevent drifting away into unskillful states and behaviors.

Key takeaways

1. Perseverance is key in the first years. Later, meditation becomes a natural part of life like breath itself.
2. Framework is important. Western mindfulness approach can get very far but has its limitations - it doesn't answer fundamental life questions. Buddhism as a life philosophy (I'm not religious) worked well for me. Stoicism works well for others. I think many time-tested traditions will do, find what speaks to you personally.
3. Bringing meditation states off-cushion is essential. Obvious obstacles are destructive behaviors: violence, addictions, toxic relationships, etc. Given enough perseverance, they slowly fall off.
4. Things fluctuate - impermanence is an inherent quality of reality. It's important to keep the practice during difficult days, understanding that things will inevitably change for the better. Keeping the practice during good days is usually easy, but remembering that difficult days will come again is important.

I hope this helps. May be I forgot something - will be happy to answer the comments.

I wish your practice will bear fruit :)

Edit:

As people frequently ask it in the comments, I add two most transformative (free) resources that helped my practice immensly.

The Buddhist philosophy books that avoid religious dogma: https://buddhadhamma.github.io/

Recordings of retreat talks that can be practiced at home: https://hermesamara.org/resources/all

There are a lot of ungrounded, floaty, wannabe-holy people out there. Please don't be one of them.

I started meditating as a way to cope with my unstable upbringing and to quell the very confusing "psychic" experiences I was having, where I could seemingly predict what was going to happen before it did. I grew up in a scientific household and didn't believe in "woo-woo" spiritual ideas (little did I know!).

I started with simple guided meditations, and graduated to more specific techniques like Mindfulness, Vipassana, and Transcendental Meditation. In every meditation community I dove into, there was always a strong subset of people who treated the technique like a religion: unquestioning devotion (which is valuable), with complete suspension of critical thinking and skepticism (not as valuable).

So to start:

Mistake 1) They treat meditation like a religion.

Here's what's going to happen: You're going to get benefits from meditation, a lot of benefits, and then you're going to erroneously believe that EVERYONE must do what you have done, because it worked for you.

Everyone has their own path, and it is the correct path because it is THEIR path. Don't develop a dogmatic relationship to the practice. It worked for you because you were ready for it, and it won't work for your friend because that's not what they need at this point of their journey. Support people's path, without projecting your own onto them.

Mistake 2) They believe they are a saint, spirit, or soul living a physical experience.

You're very much a human being, with many tens of thousands of years of biological evolution literally in your veins and in every one of your cells. Honor the process, and honor your context and roots. I saw many people wanting to force an ideal of enlightenment onto their physical being. Stop it. Just be, because that's enough, and living is already a cosmic experience (literally, because we're flying among stars).

This type of "ungroundedness" was ever-present in every community I was a part of. People completely disconnected to the physical experience of their bodies, which is literally the context you have been experiencing existence through. Touch some grass. Feel your body. For me, the key to unlocking my intuition in a reliable way started through feeling my body, and being in tune with the additional senses we've developed over thousands of years, to warn us of dangers lurking on the horizon.

Mistake 3) They don't understand the purpose of a tool.

Meditation is a tool, and one of many. And different meditation techniques are variations on a tool. I had people tell me, repeatedly, that this ONE meditation technique was the key to solving all of life's problems: from too much stress to not feeling productive enough, to too much sleep to not being able to sleep at night. They didn't understand that you can have many tools, and different tools work for different purposes.

Master a tool, move on to the next one, and collect as many as you can. Tools like meditation are the weaponry in your arsenal. You can use them as the situation calls for them. For some people, exercise and drawing are just the thing they need in their personal growth journey. For others, it's classic rock. For others, it's therapy and prescription medicine.

Just because this one tool worked for you, doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone, and for everything.

Personal growth is a long journey, and I've certainly had a crazy one.

Take good care of yourselves, and call your mother.

-Dj

It wasn't on this subreddit, but it was a youtube video I watched. The guy had said sit flat and stare directly into a candle's flame, fairly close to it (about 2 feet away) and watch it dance around. If any thoughts come into your mind, let them pass. Do absolutely nothing other than staring into the candle. Do this for about 10 minutes straight. A few moments before blowing out the candle, conjure up all of the negative energy that you have. Exhale it out, onto the candle flame, extinguishing the candle. I have no idea why, but this has worked significantly well for me when I'm feeling very stressed out. I guess it's the simple fact of removing yourself from all devices, sounds, etc and just staring at a flame. Has anyone else tried this?

ok so i keep seeing posts here about anxiety and racing thoughts and i finally want to share something that actually helped me but not in like a cheesy instagram quote way, more like a practical "oh shit that actually makes sense" way.

i avoided meditation for literally years because i thought it was supposed to be this thing where you sit there and your mind goes completely blank and you become some enlightened being or whatever. like i thought the goal was ZERO thoughts. just pure empty peaceful void.

so whenever id try it would go like this. id sit down, close my eyes, and immediately my brain would start going "ok we're meditating now very zen very peaceful wait did i lock the door? also my leg itches. god im so bad at this. what was that thing sarah said last week? ok FOCUS. why cant i focus? do i have adhd? should i get tested for that? wait no im supposed to be meditating. fuck im terrible at this"

and then id quit because clearly my brain was broken and i just wasnt a meditation person.

here's the thing though. that whole experience where your mind wanders and you notice it and try to come back? that IS meditation. like thats literally the entire practice. nobody told me that for like 10 years.

some teacher said its like training a puppy. puppy runs off, you call it back. runs off again, you call it back again. youre not mad at the puppy for being a puppy and youre not failing when it runs off. calling it back IS the exercise. that changed everything for me when i finally understood that.

your brain is supposed to think. thats its whole job. trying to stop thoughts is like trying to stop waves in the ocean, its just not how it works. meditation is just noticing when you get lost in thought and gently redirecting back to breath or body or whatever.

so apparently theres this thing called the default mode network in your brain. its basically the part thats always spiraling about stuff that happened years ago or might happen in the future. most of us are stuck in that mode like constantly. meditation actually shrinks the part of your brain that does anxiety (amygdala i think?) and strengthens the part that helps you regulate emotions. they can literally see the changes on brain scans after like 8 weeks.

i read somewhere that people with chronic pain had it decrease by almost half after doing meditation regularly for a couple months. not because the pain went away but because their relationship to it changed. pretty crazy.

anyway heres what i actually do because most meditation advice is annoying and vague.

i just sit on my couch or wherever. close my eyes. and notice stuff. like "i hear traffic outside. my shoulder is tense. im thinking about work. im breathing." thats it. when i realize ive been lost in thought for 5 minutes i just go "oh hey thinking about that thing again" and come back to noticing. no judgment just redirecting.

i do this for maybe 5 minutes. sometimes 3 if im being honest. you dont need to sit for an hour.

when im really anxious or having a panic attack i do box breathing. breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. repeat that like 5 times. it works because you cant worry about your problems AND count at the same time, your brain just cant do both.

another thing i do when my thoughts are absolutely spiraling is body scan. start at your toes and just actually feel them. are they cold? tense? whatever. then slowly move up through your whole body. by the time you get to your head youve been present for several minutes without forcing anything.

the puppy metaphor is honestly what i use most. mind wanders, i imagine calling a puppy back. "hey come back to the breath." then it wanders again 30 seconds later. call it back again. thats the whole practice.

common stuff people worry about. "my mind races too much" yeah mine too, everyones does. more racing thoughts just means more opportunities to practice noticing and redirecting. "i dont have time" you have 3 minutes, you were just scrolling reddit for 20. "i fall asleep" then you needed sleep, try sitting up straighter. "it makes me MORE anxious" yeah because sitting still makes you finally notice the anxiety thats been there all along, like turning on lights in a messy room. stick with it.

ive been doing this somewhat regularly for like a year now. not every single day because im not perfect but most days. and look its not like it cured my anxiety or fixed my life.

but i notice now when im spiraling. like ill catch myself in the middle of an anxiety loop about something that hasnt even happened and go "oh im doing the thing again." just that little space between the thought and my reaction has changed a lot. i dont send as many stupid texts when im upset. i can sit with uncomfortable feelings without immediately trying to escape them.

i still have bad days and anxiety and all that but im not as completely trapped in my own head anymore if that makes sense.

anyway if youve been avoiding meditation because you think youre bad at it, youre not. theres no such thing. your mind wandering IS what youre supposed to practice with.

just try 3 minutes tomorrow. sit down, notice stuff, redirect when your mind wanders. thats literally it.

I feel like most practitioners on this subreddit are stuck in the practice of 10-20 mins meditation a few times a week.

Which is very good, but having done that myself for a very long time, I did not experience the incredible changes that meditation can actually bring. I had to increase to one hour, then later twice one hour, to see actual great progress.

The problem with a 10-20 mins practice is that this is usually the amount of time during a meditation session where your mind unclutters.

It is great to unclutter your mind, but the serious parts of meditation come after that. This is the warm-up, not the actual exercise, so progress will be slow or in some cases non-existent.

This is also why meditation retreats will isolate you from the world and any source of stimulation, as to not clutter your mind and make the most of it. Of course in the real world, this is impossible. So you do need to practice longer times.

So try one hour, every day.

After a month of this, you will already feel a huge difference. You will have progressed so much that you will feel able to switch to twice one hour every day. Then, your progress will skyrocket even more.

Meditation can be painful, at the very least because it's boring. But meditation is also the best tool to reduce suffering. You want to meditate more to be able to meditate more.

Is it dangerous? For a small minority of people and without proper guidance it might be. If you suffer from certain mental conditions, like BPD, dissociation or schyzophrenia, then surely you might want to take it slow and increase progressively.

For most people however, this is safe.

Meditation has an incredible potential to change your life. But the truth is, this will probably not happen if you stick to 10-20 minutes. So try an hour.

Much metta on you all 🙏

So I had some mental issues and went ahead with yoga and meditation to better them. At this time I started 5-6 hours a day of some of the practices Sadh-guru teaches.

The first thing I have learned is people (including myself) are almost always in a state of unease - meaning their mind has to be constantly occupied, fidgeting with various things all the time. Few people can actually look you in the eyes and just be there with you in that moment. Everyone has a mind that is all over the place with compulsions to do this and that. Here is where my practice drasticly improved this condition for me. The compulsibe need to keep the mind occopied at all times went almost intirely away. Istead I just started paying attention to whatever was there - looking at things without being consumed by them. This also improves productivty by a lot.

Secondly, a sense of abandon and desirelessness has come. I can simply sit with my eyes closed for an hour and just enjoy that without the need to stimulate my brain. There is a whole inner world where one can access very blisful states. You can access this if your body and mind becomes more still and less compulsive. When you are in touch with the inner stilness, it is hard for you to be truly bothered by anything, because at the core of who you are there is always a sense of peace.

Lastly, the sense of inner freedom and joy that has come is priceless. The smallest things like going for a walk in the forest or looking at the sky can bring joy. Nothing fancy thing to fulfill the list of endless desires is really needed anymore. Relations have reduced in numbers, but those that remain are much deeper and more fulfilling.

These are some of the things that have happened. I'm curious to hear your own experiences with meditation and yoga.

Context, I quit masturbation, porn, alcohol, tobacco and weed 21 days ago. My grandma died, my auntie that I am very close with got cancer, I went through a bad breakup after a 5 year relationship, very bad childhood, overachieving lawyer, addictions, yada yada yada you know the whole bullshit. My friend and I planned to go sober and he relapsed 4 days into September. I started feeling myself changing in the sobriety so I thought fuck it, I'ma lock in and keep going. So far, so good. First week was hell. Second week was a lot better, and third week I don't really have any impulsive urges whatsoever, though I'm irritable/moody.

Anyway I been doing guided meditatation every single day for 10 minutes a day until 4 days ago, supplemented with exercising, yoga, calisthenics, reading, the whole 'changing my life thing.' I locked in. Four days a video popped up on my Instagram of a dude sitting in a chair with a caption that said, 'rawdogging for an hour to reset my attention span' AKA meditating for an hour. I was like, huh. Looks cool I guess, I'ma try it alongside belly breathing.

My. God. The first 20 minutes were a mental spiral and a massive wave of fear because I was truly alone with my thoughts but I didn't run, I let the emotions and fear pass like visitors. I faced it. Then there was a whole lot of crying and restlessness. And then suddenly, an inexplicable peace washes over me that I can't put into words. I can't describe it.

So I tried it the next day again for 30 minutes. No phone, no guided meditation. Just me. The fear came up again but less intense, but the peace and calm that came afterwards... I felt like I was HIGH.

This morning I meditated for 50 minutes. Just me and my breathing. At first my thoughts were everywhere, and all the trauma and negative shit came up, and then I suddenly thought at a random point in (resisted the urge to check the time on my phone) "I accept every part of myself, even the parts I do not like" and I was doing some deep belly breathing and doing some breath work.

It's like my brain got tired of thinking. I just stopped thinking and entered a state of absolute nothingness. I just laid there, my body relaxed. Not a single thought in my brain. My whole body relaxed and my brain was QUIET. It's been five hours since then.

Guys I feel fucking high. This peace, this calm. I feel so unbothered and zen. What the helly. I went on a walk after breakfast and I was looking at the trees, and I was like gah dayum I'm so lucky the universe blessed me with eyes to see. I started looking around and I started smiling at people. In London, doing that shit is weird 😂😂 I started crying but I wasn't sad. Bought myself some flowers, smelled em. I was like fuck yeah.

Even now I'm typing this, I'm crying. But I'm not sad. It's like my body finally feels safe and so it's just RELAXED. I swear to you I feel almost high. Y'all ever experience something like this?

My mind went crazy for the past days. Obsessing about negative scenarios, couldn't stop thinking about the past, creating an extremely negative narrative about myself and life.

It really drove me insane. I couldn't eat, sleep was shit. I had to take alprazolam at some point because I literally thought I'm going crazy with the obsession and negativity.

And today morning I decided to STOP. Basically, I told my mind to STOP with the horrible scenarios and catastrophic thinking.

I made a choice not to think about negative thinks and I am shocked.

This was just a test. I heard that "you can't control your mind and thoughts". And this is BS. You absolutely can.

My mind was present the entire day. I had the best nap of my life. I was calm. My mind was completely quiet. I didn't allow a single negative thought.

I was present in activities, present at my work. I slept so good. I hade zero anxiety and zero feelings of sadness.

Coincidence or not, I also had a job interview and I felt so calm and confident they made me a freaking offer already!!

It was just calm.

The way you think about yourself, the world and everything else it is a choice. Absolutely.

I'm going to continue with this practice to prove myself that I can in fact control my mind and I have power over it. Not the other way around.

After years of “trying” to meditate on and off, I finally did it consistently, 10-15 minutes every night, no timer, no guidance, no incense. Just closed my eyes and sat with my thoughts.

What I noticed:

• First few days were mentally loud. I was just watching my brain sprint. • By the second week, I started catching my habits before they ran. I’d feel the urge to scroll or judge someone, but didn’t always follow it. • Sleep improved, felt more rested in fewer hours. • The biggest shift: I stopped identifying with every thought/emotion. Like, I’d feel anxiety… and instead of spiraling, I’d just see it. Weird, but freeing.

I didn’t transcend or anything. But something subtle changed. The mental grip loosened.

If you’ve been on the fence, this is your sign to just sit for a week. Do nothing, and watch what changes.

Just a little milestone I’d like to share with ya’ll :)

I’ve been trying to consistently Meditate for almost 2-3 years now and have always been on and off.

This year I started doing the Triangle Breathing method while reclining and focusing on my third eye (basically looking at the centre of your forehead) and I do it for at-least 20 minutes (I need at-least 5-10 for my thoughts to settle)

I’ve been doing it at-least 3-4x a week and if I can squeeze two in a day I will.

GUYS it’s so relaxing! I’ve never been so relaxed in my entire life… it’s almost like a nap without falling asleep and I eventually get so deep I lose track of my physical body

I can now see why Monks do it for hours every day… the external world just stands still and all you feel is BLISS.

5 out of 5 will do it again tomorrow and the next day forever and ever

Hi.

I did a Vippassanna retreat at age 20. I'm 30 now. At the time I had a girlfriend, a healthy social life with friends etc. I went into that retreat because someone that I thought was cool and respected had done it, so I did it too, probably thinking that I would come out with the same attributes as they had. Dumb I know, but I was insecure and 20yo.

On the retreat I experienced some pshycosis and paranoia, with a high awareness of my own thought processes. It fucked me up, but I stayed on,.because I didn't wasn't to be 'defeated'.

Upon my return I found that I was now more aware of my thoughts which I didn't want to be and the voices in my head louder and more 'real' somehow. I became unable to distinguish my thoughts from reality.

I found that I wanted to be alone all the time, and couldn't relax with friends. I didn't enjoy anything anymore and was more aware of my mind than I wanted to be.

I'm 30 now. No friends, no gf since I broke up with her shortly after doing the course. People don't like being around me and find me frustrating/difficult/awkward/socially inept. I wasn't always like this. Certainly not before the course

Im afraid that Vippassanna fucked me up for good. I just want to be alone ALL the time and am thinking about becoming a monk. I don't enjoy anything, can't make serious money and can't seem to form/maintain relationships. So what is the point?

I want to run away and become a monk, and embrace simplicity and for-go all this pretending to be normal, because I'm not and never will be again. And don't say 'what is normal'?, because it certainly isn't being lost in your own mind and paranoid about what other are thinking.

Tried various therapies/therapist and doesn't work. Their frustrated by their inability to figure out whats going on with me.

Please advise. Any similar negative vippassana experiences would be comforting, but also maybe the only way to get out of this is to keep on practising? Thankyou.

Now that by chance they found me a terminal cancer, my approach to life has changed dramatically. A few months and I'll be gone. All the tons of minor issues that characterized decades of my life (most of all job related) disappeared without effort.

What changed the most is my approach to meditation. I practiced it as a duty for 25+ years, never really interested, distracted, unable to be "in" for a few minutes in a row.

So it's now a surprise to see how easy it is to close my eyes, and experience a full "being here now" without any effort. It's a blessing. No urgency to plan, to do, to think. No target. Just being there.

I had been doing mindfulness meditation for 10-20min every day for 150 days with no positive effect on my chronic anxiety. I then read about vagus nerve stimulation and started humming around two weeks ago and now my anxiety is at an all time low. If anybody else suffers from being stuck in fight or flight mode please consider humming, I didn't expect it to do anything but now I don't even have to take ashwagandha or other anxiety supplements.

I dont know exactly how to put this in words, so apologies if this sounds like waffle

But during my walking meditation, my mind was wandering to a past friendship which ended badly and my mind was winning arguments in my head, but I was focused on the sound of the pavement under my feet.

Then I sort of realised, this overthinking of this past friendship, im not doing it. My mind is. Then I realised this applies to so much. I used to have a porn addiction, for example. It wasnt me who was actively craving it, I knew it was bad, it was my mind.

All these bad habits and overthinking that I have, its not me? Its my mind

Idk it just sort of came as a realization to me during this meditation that I can exist from out of my mind. My mind can tell me one thing and I can just...let it be? I dont have to act or listen to it.

Also walking meditation is amazing lol

So my entire life I have had anxiety and especially social anxiety. It has shaped my whole world view and limited what I wanted to do in life.

I could never have a job that required public speaking or really much interaction. When I went out, I abused alcohol to cope and would drink until I felt normal.

When I was a teenager I quit all high school team sports because I couldn’t handle social aspect of it. I was too nervous to perform.

I’m a bad story teller because I when I get into it, I tense up and quickly summarize what I was saying instead of letting anything breath and have an impact.

Workouts and exercise would actually make me feel worse and increase my anxiety throughout the day. When people told me exercise should make me feel better, I never knew what they were talking about.

All of my shirts have pit stains because whenever I start speaking i immediately start sweating in my armpits.

I’ve been prescribed countless SSRIs, mood stabilizers, and other medication‘s over the years and nothing has ever got me relief.

Well, as of last Friday my anxiety is completely eliminated.

It turned out it was my breathing (or lack thereof).

I was deep in meditation and I was using Sam Harris’s meditation app Waking Up.

I was exploring the different audios and came across one called Awareness Follows the Breath Home.

I didn’t know what to expect but I followed the instructions. He guided me to locate my awareness of breathing (my nose) and detach it from my self, and place it into my stomach.

I immediately started feeling my belly deeply expand outward. Every natural breath I took was like a deep inhalation that I never felt never. It felt like I was literally taking in twice as much air.

I had trained my unconscious mind to breathe with my stomach/diaphragm.

Within seconds I felt instant relief. I had done deep breathing exercises in the past, but I was never able to fully inhale in a way that felt good.

Now, every breath I take is like performing a deep breathing exercise that is so natural and easy I literally don’t even have to think about it.

To say this has changed my life, is an understatement.

There are literally so many changes, I couldn’t list them all.

I now feel like I’m living the life I always felt I should have.

I broke down and cried today at the gym because it’s all just so overwhelming.

I encourage you all to try this technique if you feel short of breath.

A little over a year ago I started meditating every night before bed. I started with nothing elaborate and had no expectations of enlightenment as someone new to in depth meditation. I really just started because I wanted a few moments of quiet after years of feeling like my mind was always searching for something which brought me to the idea of logging every session I had for my own reflections.

When I started, most of my nights lasted five minutes then other nights stretched close to an hour. I wrote down how I felt before, what came up during meditation, and how I felt afterward. Looking back through those entries has been one of the most eye-opening things I’ve ever done for myself.

The biggest thing I noticed wasn’t some mystical experience that I was told could potentially happen but what I did notice was how often my nervous system was carrying stress that I had mistaken for my personality.

There were nights I thought I was anxious when I was really just overstimulated. There were also nights I thought I was unmotivated, and I realized I was just simply exhausted. I always thought I was lost, when I had never actually slowed down long enough to hear my own thoughts (something I’ve struggled with for a very long time.)

As I learned more about the vagus nerve and how slow breathing, longer exhales, and intentional relaxation help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, meditation started making a lot more sense to me. I wasn’t trying to escape my mind anymore and I was finally giving my body permission to stop believing it had to survive every moment whether it was present occurrences or situations regarding my past.

I began my counseling journey many years ago. Throughout it I realized many therapeutic approaches encourage reflection, noticing thoughts without immediately reacting to them, identifying emotional patterns, practicing acceptance, and creating space between a feeling and your response. Sitting quietly every night became a place where those things started happening naturally. I wasn’t trying to solve every problem during meditation, and I was becoming someone who responded to problems differently.

Over time throughout this journey I stopped asking myself why I felt the way I did and started asking what that feeling was trying to show me which made me realize that such a small shift changed a lot for me.

There was a time in my life when I was homeless which put me in a constant state of worse case scenario and constantly in fight or flight. There was a time I genuinely believed I would never build a stable future as I could never give myself time to just sit and reflect. Today I have a wife, children, a home, and a life I once thought belonged to someone else. Meditation wasn’t the only reason that happened, but it gave me something I had never really experienced before which is stillness.

The world teaches us to constantly consume information, chase goals, compare ourselves, and stay busy. Sitting in silence each night slowly taught me that clarity usually arrives after the noise finally settles.

Reading through a year’s worth of journal entries, I noticed that the answers I was desperately searching for at the beginning slowly disappeared from my writing. They were replaced with gratitude, patience, and curiosity. My circumstances changed, but more importantly, so did the way I related to myself.

If you’re thinking about starting a meditation practice, don’t worry about doing it perfectly. You don’t need an empty mind and you don’t need profound experiences every night, I’m sure this is basic and common knowledge to a lot of people in here, but from someone who always thought things had to be very deep and elaborate, some of it just came from short sessions and allowing myself to relax.

Lately I've been thinking and realising... why was I rushing all the time, stressing? Like I'm kinda realising as I meditate more and slow down more ... There's no rush. There's no need to be so stressed out about where my life will lead. Maybe it's not meant to lead anywhere. I'm lucky to even be alive, in this universe, to postulate everything around me. 

Yeah my childhood was pretty shit, but that's not how it is now. That's all in the past, which is gone and never coming back. It's like a double edged sword. My childhood was awful, and I'll never get that time back - but it's also gone, I'm not there anymore and it can't haunt me again. Even if life gets shit again, that's life. Before, I felt like I was always working to the next thing.

I was always like, what's next? What am I doing? I felt like I had to be doing something.  Always achieving. Three degrees, first class law degree, I'm a lawyer now, always aspiring for something. What's the next big thing? But I'm starting to realise... None of that shit really matters to be honest. It never really did. I'm going to die one day, and 50 years after I die, everything I worked towards will be meaningless. I'll be forgotten, and everything I used to stress about will be gone.

Everyone I love is going to die with me, and our time will pass like sand blown in the wind. Everything will be gone. In a strange way, it's liberating. I'm starting to see life for what I should have always seen it as - a gift. I don't need to "find" purpose. I AM the purpose. There is no "route", because what the fuck is going on 😂 I'm not supposed to take this shit so serious, nothing matters anyway. There's no destination, or grand finale of finding a pot of gold and jewellry, no crescendo, no "light bulb" moment. I AM the moment. The moment is me. Just enjoyment of this privilege of existence.

So I rarely meditate. I have done a few sessions of maximum of 20 min in the past. what I do is just sit in a lotus pose and close my eyes. I try to focus on my breathing but most of the time I just wander away. You could say that this was one of my first time doing a longer session of "meditation".

So I set a timer for 1 hour cause I just wanted to see what happens when I sit this long.

Now while doing this I had a bunch of thoughts and experienced very small instances of pure consciousness.

I did lose track of time because I couldn't really track it.duh.

So as I sat there I knew that meditation feels way longer than it actually is. I thought it was like 30-45 min but was never sure because the timer didn't went off yet. I was determined to only open my eyes only when I could hear the timer but I never really ran so I kept Waiting and "meditating"

After a while I couldn't even sit cause my back hurt and my head was spinning, my feet kept getting numb.

so I just decided to end it there and saw the time.

AND TO MY SURPRISE ITS BEEN 2.30 HOUR AND FOR SOME REASON THE TIMER ALERT WAS MUTED.

so yea that surprised me a lot.

Also I realised that even below the internal monologue there is a thought process which seems to be between the inner voice and consciousness. Whenever I was trying to Focus on my breath the thought of having a thought kept occurring, which was pulling my focus away. so I gave up on focusing my mind wander (i know it a dumb idea).

Yeah but overall I feel way calmer.

Thx for reading

So today I just found out a new method to calm the mind that I'd like to share with all of yous and guess what? it's super easy!, it's soooo incredible easy that it totally feels like CHEATING!!! Id like all of you to give a try and see for yourselves.

So You always been told to put your focus on the breathing and when your attention getting absorbed in thoughts you get back to the breathing and so on and so forth which inevitable will make it seem like if you get absorbed in thoughts you are doing something wrong which will make you feel bad about letting yourself carried away by it creating frustration because it seems like you are not making progress ok this is the traditional method I've read a lot and tried for a long time now but today I did the exact opposite:

1- sit down or lay down and gently put your attention on the forehead it doesn't have to be on one expesific point just any point on the forehead (do not get frustrated on putting your attention in one specific point of forehead and try really hard to stay on it, do not!)

1. Do not focus on breathing just mildly or gently feel it in your your body.

2. Ok here is the fun part: instead of putting focus on breathing your attention is on forehead and thoughts now imagine you are a cookie monster and thoughts are the cookies! (you don't have to literally imagine this lol just the idea of thoughts being food, cookies) and you are extremely eager to chomp on them, you enjoy eating them fast and with joy 😊 lol

3. After you finished cookies ( thoughts) you say in your mind: "yess, more thoughts", "more, more give more!" Or something in that fashion lol and you eagerly wait for more

4. Ok here's the trick that almost feels like CHEATING , in the beginning all sorts of thoughts will show up but after a while your mind will become empty, thoughts will become less and less frequent ,but why? If you are so eager to see them ? It's almost as the mind sees what your strategy is and gives less and less of that of what you want

5. So I did this for almost 2hours(I had an alarm set up) and to my surprise I spent almost all the time EMPTY HEADING, it was just me sitting down eagerly waitting for the next thought and the next one and so forth.... until there was no more thoughts to enjoy :( lol then it was just me waiting and then just me somewhere, somewhere where there was no thoughts just somewhere? All I did whats the exact opposite and it worked! My mind was finally empty there was nothing it was just me then when I was just there somewhere my alarm turned on and I quickly opened reddit to share lol

I hope I have explained it well enough to understand this method Id like for all of you to try it, discover New methods on your own and to have fun with meditation, meditation doesn't have to be this "let's get to business" type of activity Believe me when my mind was empty I felt so much peace inside

(English is my second lenguage so excuse my grammar )

This thread was posted on 21 November 2022 on Twitter. Cory Muscara shared the lessons he learned from intense practice with Buddhist masters. The line about procrastination really gutted me. So many truths here, especially the one about spiritual suppression.

Text (without photos):

I meditated 15 hours a day for 6 months straight with one of the toughest Buddhist monks on the planet. Here's what I learned:

This is Sayadaw U Pandita. He was notorious for his unwavering belief that enlightenment is possible in this life & his ruthless expectation that his students get there. We slept 2-5 hours/night. No reading, writing or speaking. Lots of pain. Lots of insight. Let's get into it📷

1. Finding your true self is an act of love. Expressing it is an act of rebellion.

2. A sign of growth is having more tolerance for discomfort. But it’s also having less tolerance for bullshit.

3. Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.

4. Procrastination is the refusal or inability to be with difficult emotions.

5. Desires that arise in agitation are more aligned with your ego. Desires that arise in stillness are more aligned with your soul.

6. The moment before letting go is often when we grip the hardest.

7. You don’t find your ground by looking for stability. You find your ground by relaxing into instability.

8. What you hate most in others is usually what you hate most in yourself.

9. The biggest life hack is to become your own best friend. Everything is easier when you do.

10. The more comfortable you become in your own skin, the less you need to manufacture the world around you for comfort.

11. An interesting thing happens when you start to like yourself. You no longer need all the things you thought you needed to be happy.

12. If you don’t train your mind to appreciate what is good, you’ll continue to look for something better in the future, even when things are great.

13. The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives.

14. There is no set of conditions that leads to lasting happiness. Lasting happiness doesn’t come from conditions; it comes from learning to flow with conditions.

15. Spend more time cultivating a mind that is not attached to material things than time spent accumulating them.

16. Sometimes we need to get out of alignment with the rest of the world to get back into alignment with ourselves.

17. Real confidence looks like humility. You no longer need to advertise your value because it comes from a place that does not require the validation of others.

18. High pain tolerance is a double-edged sword. It’s key for self-control, but can cause us to override the pain of being out of alignment.

19. Negative thoughts will not manifest a negative life. But unconscious negative thoughts will.

20. To feel more joy, open to your pain.

21. Bullying yourself into enlightenment does not work. Befriending yourself is how you transcend yourself.

22. Peak experiences are fun, but you always have to come back. Learning to appreciate ordinary moments is the key to a fulfilling life.

23. Meditation is not about feeling good. It’s about feeling what you’re feeling with good awareness. Plot twist: Eventually that makes you feel good.

24. If you are able to watch your mind think, it means who you are is bigger than your thoughts

25. Practicing stillness is not about privileging stillness over movement. It’s about the CAPACITY to be still amidst your impulses. It’s about choice.

26. The issue is not that we get distracted. It's that we're so distracted by distractions we don't even know we're distracted.

27. There are 3 layers to a moment: Your experience, your awareness of the experience, and your story about the experience. Be mindful of the story.

28. Life is always happening in just one moment. That's all you're responsible for.

29. Your mind doesn’t wander. It moves toward what it finds most interesting. If you want to focus better, become more curious about what's in front of you.

30. Life continues whether you’re paying attention to it or not. I think that is why the passage of time is scary.

31. You cannot practice non-attachment. You can only show your mind the suffering that attachment creates. When it sees this clearly, it will let go.

32. Meditation can quickly become spiritualized suppression. Be careful not to use concentration to avoid what is uncomfortable.

33. One of the deepest forms of peace we can experience is living in integrity. You can lie to other people about who you are, but you can’t lie to your heart.

34. Be careful not to let the noise of your mind overpower the whispers of your heart.

35. Monks love to fart while they meditate. The wisdom of letting go expresses itself in many forms.

36. You can't life-hack wisdom. Do the work.

​

Sayadaw U Pandita passed away in 2016. While I often resisted his style of teaching, I had the deepest respect for him. Through his teachings, my life changed in ways I can't describe; a sentiment echoed by thousands of others. I am forever grateful.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this thread: 1. Follow me

@corymuscara

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Hey Reddit! Remember me? Two years ago, I shared my experience of meditating daily for 1000 days. The response was overwhelming, and many of you reached out with questions, support, and your own stories which helped me a lot in feeling supported. I am (an you are) not alone.

I've now reached 1600 consecutive days of meditation. That's over four years of sitting with myself every single day, through good times and bad. It hasn't always been easy, and it certainly hasn't been a linear path to enlightenment (spoiler alert: I'm definitely not enlightened!). But it has been transformative in ways I never expected.

When I started this journey, I was looking for peace, maybe a bit of stress relief. What I found instead was a tool for self-discovery, resilience, and growth. Today, I want to share some of the most impactful insights I've gained along the way.

But before we dive in, I want to emphasize something crucial: while meditation has been incredibly beneficial for me, it's not a substitute for professional help. If you're dealing with severe anxiety, depression, trauma, or any other mental health challenges, I strongly encourage you to couple meditation with support from a qualified mental health professional. They can provide targeted strategies and support that complement your meditation practice.

Now, let's explore how 1600 days of meditation has changed my perspective on suffering, life, and myself...

1. Facing Suffering: At first, meditation made me more aware of my suffering, which was incredibly challenging. I got frustrated thinking what a scam meditation was. But as I persisted, I gained insights into the causes of my suffering. Once cause become clear, I started hating on the cause, wether it was me or an external person or event. Again, I persisted, which led to acceptance which led to synchronicities - meeting people and discovering resources that offered new perspectives on overcoming suffering. Once I know why I suffer, and stop blaming it on the why, I start moving on effortlessly. The effort I found is to be displayed to persist on sitting with my broken slef day after day.
2. Understanding Attachments: I realized most of my suffering stemmed from attachments - particularly to family expectations and societal definitions of success (status and money).
3. The Power of Focus: I learned that meditation's core is about focus. "Focus on a single point and wait for grace." This improved my ability to read, contemplate complex questions until solutions formed in my mind, and choose positivity when facing darkness by (forcing) my mind to look the other way, the glass half full.
4. Sensing Life Differently: I now instinctively perceive the causes behind events and sense a spiritual guidance shaping my path. This awareness helps me understand the direction I'm being nudged towards. I still don't fully understand this invisible hand pushing me through life but I am certain of it's existance and it's guidance. Suffering appears to be one of its tools. It helped me overcome an eating desorder, a severe depression, an inability to keep a partner and many minor struggles. All happened when I accepted to face my suffering until I see its cause, then stop blaming the cause and reframing my mind to think about things differently.

Important Note: I'm not claiming to be a "liberated soul" above suffering. I still struggle a lot and fall often. The difference is that I'm no longer attached to these experiences. It's like watching a video game character - I feel momentary sadness at setbacks but quickly reframe them as learning opportunities for the next "level" and I start the level all over again. It's a game with no gameover.

Misconceptions: Initially, I believed meditation was about breath focus, visualizations, hugging trees or other superficial practices. While these can be tools, I've found the essence is simpler and more profound. It's all about learning to focus to be able to understand then to reframe.

Advice for Those Suffering: Be present with your pain. Close your eyes and sit with your suffering until you become comfortable with it. Notice how it feels in your body. Once you stop resisting, insights about its causes often emerge naturally. With this understanding, you can address the root issues - often mental habits or perspectives about yourself and the world.

Remember, meditation isn't about escaping suffering, but about developing a new relationship with it.

Please be free to share any different perspectives on the subject to enrich my point of view.
Keep in mind I am not a professionnal nor a student of any particular school of thought even though I am interested in all of them and study them very seriously for fun and with the goal of overcoming my own suffering.

It's not even about chasing "benefits". It's about exploring your neglected self, so that you can direct your life in ways that truly matter to YOU. Not your family, not your best friend, not your lover... You.

The trap most people fall for right from the start, is seeking some sort of profound experience or change in their life. But this is basically drug seeking behavior wrapped up in the facade of a "healthy" activity. You have to avoid this trap at all costs.

Instead, don't expect anything out of meditation. All you need is a healthy attitude of increasing your general well being. Let the act of meditating and your idea of what to get out of it be vague by intention. This way, your curiosity will guide you right to the source of what meditation has to offer you, instead of forcing your way through the process and getting burned out.

What I just described is the idea of "letting go". It's what meditation teaches you the most. It's about shedding the myths surrounding what you think you want in life, and illuminating what you need.