Exploring the Depths: When Meditation Stirs More Than Calm
Meditation is often portrayed and expected to be a purely relaxing practice. This is a common misconception and can be confusing for those embarking on the meditative journey. Just like any physical skill, it takes time and consistency to build the meditative muscle, but on the other side of those moments of discomfort is liberation.
This discomfort is naturally a part of the spiritual journey as we uncover layers of ourselves that are revealed through stillness and entering new levels of awareness.
So, instead of saying meditation is your way to calm, we’d say meditation is your way into wholeness. On the journey you will encounter both your body and mind railing against you, not because it’s not good for you, but because your biology is wired to maintain a certain homeostasis. When you start to shift that balance towards even more wholeness, you are rewriting your base code, one thought at a time.
What else is beyond finding those moments of more calm? So much more. As you move through layers of consciousness, you can view yourself and the collective from broader heights. This is also called awakening. Your perspective and ability to choose becomes stronger and more conscious. Joy, bliss and other elevated states are not just states of calm, they’re energized states of presence and connection.
When Meditation isn’t Always Calm
A common misconception about meditation: That it always calms the nervous system.
There’s some complexity here, so let’s get into it. Yes, when in the majority of meditative states, like alpha and theta, the nervous system has switched into the rest/digest/heal side, also known as the parasympathetic response. By meditating consistently, you can increase your ability to balance your nervous system such that you’re not activated into fight/flight so easily.
However, when you move into the realm of mystical experiences and perhaps your brain is entering gamma, the sympathetic side of the nervous system can light up. This is when your heart rate starts moving, breathing gets deeper and you feel a sense of arousal. This can be surprising when it happens to you, because you may think that you’re doing meditation wrong. You’re not.
The sympathetic side of the nervous system is not always the bad guy. Sometimes you need that extra dose of energy as you move into a higher level of consciousness. It helps open you up, if you will. Personally, I think it may also increased energy in the field moving through you, and your body is trying to integrate it, such as when in a kundalini activation.
So, the next time you feel yourself getting activated when in meditation, instead of judging it, know that it is normal and flow with it. Allow it. Discover what this surge of energy is offering you.
What is a Mystical Experience?
A mystical experience is when you leap into a higher level of consciousness than what your baseline has been. Your ego has left the building for a moment and you experience more of your wholeness.
This may happen after you’ve been meditating for a while and encountered an aroused state where everything changed, you saw things from a higher perspective, had profound insights and maybe even continue after your session to feel energy moving through your body.
What happened?
This is a deeply personal experience, so it’s a difficult question to answer broadly. But oftentimes when you move into the mystical, your brain and heart are in coherence and this vibration has unlocked your ability to connect more deeply with the world around and within you. You’re not ever the same. It’s as if you saw the divine for a moment and you cannot unsee it. You know it on some level.
These mystical moments are important, and not to be discounted because they are guideposts along your journey and represent a leap that you took to courageously move forward into increased awareness.
That being said, they also shouldn’t be clung to tightly because oftentimes you’ll come down from the experience and feel confused as to both what you encountered and also how to move about the world after seeing the top of the mountain.
But it was just the top of infinite mountains.
And it may take time to integrate the experience, and that’s ok. Enjoy the plateaus as this is where your body and mind can catch up to your soul.
Welcoming Discomfort on the Spiritual Journey
If you’ve been on the spiritual journey for a while, you know that discomfort is part of the process. Rather than seeing it as something to overcome, I like to view it as an indication that I’m about to break through. And we are continuously breaking through.
We cannot engineer ourselves out of experiencing discomfort, because as we shine the light of awareness, we see more. Some of what we see will make us uncomfortable. This is also called the individual and collective shadow.
There are different types of discomfort. Let’s chat about a few of them:
Physical: When you first get into a meditation practice, this is your body's first line of defense. Remember, the body doesn’t necessarily want to heal or change. It’s the animal side of us, so it may fight you with common weapons such as spontaneous muscle aches, feelings of needing to move, headaches, you name it. I remain amazed at how creative my body can get in rebelling against me. The longer you sit, the more you start to understand this game with the body. Persevere, and the body will give over to your mind. You’re more capable than your body wants you to think.
Mental: Once you’ve mastered the resistance in your body at some level, the next layer of resistance is your analytical mind. This is when we notice racing thoughts, perhaps anxiety and ruminations. It’s like entering a room that is a mess but you didn’t know it until you turned the lights on. This can understandably be difficult, I’m not saying it’s otherwise. But as you practice and learn not to judge yourself for your anxiety but just observe it, you’re half-way there to using your mind in new ways.
Emotional: Closely tied to mental discomfort, emotional blocks can be encountered when opening your awareness. This is because as you move into other levels of consciousness, you need to leave something behind. This is usually a limiting belief that has emotion, or energy, attached to it. As you become aware of this through your mind, your body then follows. Emotions are energy living in your physical system, asking to move. When you do deeper work, this movement can happen. Even if initially difficult, this can be a very liberating experience. Other times, it takes integration and time to understand what the emotion was and how to allow it to move more fully when you’re ready.
Spiritual: If you’ve moved through physical, mental and emotional discomfort, you can also encounter (sometimes trippy) spiritual discomfort. One of the most commonly encountered is a sudden propensity to experience the paranormal, such as ghosts and disembodied consciousness. As your abilities to perceive expand, so do what you can perceive. While uncomfortable at first, once you explore this new realm more deeply, you may find your own relationship with it. Oftentimes once you do, these apparitions no longer appear, or at least not as much. You can also move through uncomfortable dreams in the astral space, and even confusing or disturbing imagery when in meditation. Again, this is usually right before breaking through to another level of consciousness, as you move into the mystical.
All these layers of discomfort are to be expected on the spiritual journey. The more aware of this you are, the more grace you can bring to your practice. This takes courage, but it’s so worth it.
Moving Beyond Basic Practice
Any practice that helps you find your center is an effective practice for different reasons.
A 5 minute meditation may provide a downshift in your beta brain waves and a few moments of increased awareness, but it is not long enough to do substantial rewiring. Just like a 5 minute gym session is something, it’s not necessarily going to get you to the next level of your health.
That being said, you do have to start somewhere, and shorter practices are great for that. However, sometimes longer practices can help you break through much faster. Here’s why.
You’re comprised of different energetic ‘levels’ and these levels take time to activate. When you do longer practices, you allow yourself the space to move through these levels. While it can be incredibly difficult at first, once you are aware that sitting for longer periods is possible, it’s hard to go back.
The reason it’s hard to go back is because entering the field of pure connection and possibility feels so good. Your actually transforming your inner world and creating your life from a whole new level of consciousness. This is because you’re letting go of separation and smallness.
Your body exists within the dimension of time, so it needs time to move through its resistance. Your mind needs time, though maybe not as much, to move through its resistance. Your emotional body may need time to move and clear stagnation.
All of this is difficult to allow for in a 5 or even 15 minute meditation. There’s no science to this that I’m aware of, but after meditating for more than a decade, I’ve found that the sweet spot is between 20 min to over an hour. Yes, you can sit in complete stillness with no (or minimal) resistance for over an hour. It’s not that your body won’t revolt, it will, but you will learn to command your mind and therefore your body.
Just imagine what you can experience in that time, not just once, but every day. It’ll change your life.
Handling Intense Experiences
When you come up against discomfort, there are a few techniques you can try out. Keep in mind this is an iterative process as you learn what works for you, there’s not one quick fix:
Release judgment of the physical, mental or emotional discomfort you’re experiencing.
Welcome the discomfort as a teacher and tool.
Get curious. What does the discomfort want to share?
Get serious. State to your body your intentions firmly, especially when physical discomfort arises.
Stay motivated and remind yourself that there’s something on the other side of this discomfort that you want to discover.
Especially for emotional discomfort, if you need to move your body to move the emotion, allow it.
Redirect your focus. This could be to your breath, to somewhere that feels good in your body, to a mantra/affirmation or simply to spaciousness.
With spiritual discomfort, activate more trust and faith as you move into the mystical.
If you have to give yourself over to the discomfort, avoid the temptation to berate yourself. This is the beautiful thing about daily practice, you have another opportunity tomorrow. No shame or exasperation needed.
If something comes up that you are having difficulties processing, do not hesitate to get outside guidance and/or clinical support.
Benefits of moving through discomfort:
Physical Resilience: You have way more influence on your body than you may think. This can be extremely powerful for healing and for finding increased harmony in your body.
Mental Resilience: Once you find your personalized set of tools that help you move from rumination into more empowering thoughts, you then inevitably bring this skill into your daily life. You catch yourself sooner and sooner when entering negative spirals. Your powers of observation grow.
Emotional Resilience: The more you consciously meet your difficult emotions, the more confidence you build that feeling them is not a failing. You get better and better at allowing this energy in motion to move rather than it stagnating in your body and mind.
Spiritual Activations: The result of the release of pressure from the prior allows for your spiritual development to soar to new heights. You start to see a correlation between courage and breakthrough. You keep going, for a lifetime, discovering the beautiful, mystical cracks throughout our universe. You can’t get enough, because it’s more wholeness. You feel connected on and off the cushion. You’re a spiritual adventurer.
We’re not here to tell you that spiritual development is easy. It’s not. It’s not going to give you calm out of the box. It’s going to challenge you like you’ve never been challenged before. But the payoff is your wholeness, embodied presence and increased access to a joyful life. It’s mystical, unexplainable at times, but it’s also what this life is all about. Our journey back to ourselves.
