Hi Guys,


I would like to share with you my experience of meditation so far and maybe get some advice from you. I am new to meditation but recognise the need make a proper commitment now to a routine, I have to retrain my brain and take control of my negative thought patterns and conditioning and to start working towards being a happier and healthier person.

I started out by doing mindfulness meditation sporadically 10 minutes a day in the morning which most of the time seems fine and I am comfortable with that.

Occasionally though I feel like I sense spirits in the room and it freaks me out a bit....I have not been completely comfortable with meditation since I had a few spirit attachments about a year ago, though these attachments were not caused by meditation but by going to a place riddled with earth bound spirits - this experience has now made me sensitive to to their presence.

The other thing I have been dabbling with is a form of TM or mantra meditation from "The relaxation response" by Herbert Benson, which involves breathing in and out and then saying "one" internally on each out breath.

I dived straight into it, picked up the book and started meditating from nothing up to an hour a day in the first week, but mostly it was 2 x 20 minutes. It was facinating I would be very tense and uptight, my mind working overtime and I would keep repeating the mantra and then after about 10-15 minutes - booom all tension would drain from my body, my mind would stop its henpecking thoughts, it was like an atom bomb obliterated all the noise in my brain and all the tension in my body.

After a couple of days though some strangeness started to occur. I would have a mundane and uneventful memory from my childhood repeating in my mind. Just of a caravan park I used to go to with my grandparents as a kid and playing a coin op there and another image of people camping under some trees.

The images seemed to be mundane and uneventful, just little snapshots popping up, but then I began to feel like there might be something sinister hiding behind them but I could not be sure as the same memory kept repeating itself, then after my meditations I would then start to become extremely anxious and depressed, I honestly started to think on a few occasions that I was going to loose it and go crazy, so I stopped and the extreme anxiousness and depression stopped.

I felt a bit defeated if I'm honest, but didn't want to risk my sanity. From there I stopped meditation and tried to be mindful as often as I could in everyday life - just tried to watch my thoughts and stop getting dragged into the past or the future. I read stillness speaks and practicing the power of now by Tolle and really tried to ingest the words. There were some beautiful moments by myself where I managed to be fully present and the background noise of my brain stopped completely and I was totally aware of the present, every sound, movement, leaves moving on a tree, the smell of the air and noise of the wind.

Once this stillness even lasted for a complete whole day, I felt completely at peace in my soul and without worry, tension or anxiety in my body, I felt wonderfully confident and without any fear just totally calm from within - I knew everything was going to be fine, that the universe was going to take care of me...this blew me away as I reached this state just by trying to be as present as I could and without any formal meditation.....but again the day after this I started to become anxious.

As I had always thought of myself as the voice in my head that was me (the ego) but this inner peace that came forward in the stillness seemed to be me also, the ego disappeared and this presence came forward to take its place. If I was not the voice in my head - then who was I? I began to freak out a bit as I seemed to be two - the voice in my head - and also the stillness. I am starting to think that this extreme anxiety is my ego's reaction to being silenced, even for a short time, it is terrified of it's own demise or of it possibly being silenced - this is my take on it anyway.

I tried again since then to reach that state of stillness again but have never some close....now I am beginning again, with a qi gong set which lasts for 20 minutes - it helps me stay mindful and is not as intense as mindfulness or TM meditation. It feels safe

I want to find this stillness again, I want to be able to tap into this in everyday life without fear.....does your meditation routine bring you this kind of peace everyday?

Has anyone else gone through this experience? Do you think I just need to take things more slowly to get back to that point? how did you overcome your anxiety? is this a common problem or am I just a nutbar?

Thanks

Whipple