Meditation terrible side effects?

[Phill]

Hey guys, in the last entire year I dedicated to watch/listen to Leo every single day, some of them I have heard like 3-5 times because it's so much depth.

Many times in the past I tried to meditate, and what happen is, in the past, I used to meditate 10 minutes only, and everytime I tried meditating, that would trigger a depersonalization in me, I had that in the past, before meditating, because I suffer from severe anxiety, so I would always take a break from it immediately, and then I would have to go through this 1-2 months phase of pure anxiety and angryness until it dissipated. Some of them were so bad that I thought to not meditate because this is really really killing my ability to self actualize it feels, it's like, it triggers all my anxiety, all my anger, all my sadness, I am just not accepting reality as it is like I WAS before  I started meditating, I was so much more calm before I start to meditate.

Last week I decided to take a try on it again, because Leo mentions it a lot of it's benefits and how important it is, I do actually feel a big big peace when I do meditate. But the after effects is my issue here, not while I meditate.

I started meditating 15mins, in the last 3 days I did that, and man I am feeling anxious, angry, I am irritated, getting cold chills in my body followed up by sweating it's really getting out of my control right now I feel, and I am just accepting it as best as I can, not fighting against but letting it be. Some parts of the day I feel fine, almost like before, but then it comes again this huge wave of mixed up feelings... On the video "The Dark Side of meditation" Leo explains about that, so it's no surprise for me.

What bothers me is that, this is really hurting my relationships with people and in my job and also it's decreasing my willpower, discipline you know, this anxiety and anger is really taking my willpower away, I just don't know what else to do anymore, everytime I tried meditating this happend, it seems that meditation was causing this to me because it would be too much coincidence, and I have being observing my self a lot, journaling, studying, taking notes of what Leo says, accepting what is, dropping beliefs, taking responsability etc etc etc.

Anyone having the same experience? Any tips? Maybe I am not seeing something here? Should I stop or keep meditating? I am feeling suffocated, sorry if I made this sound like a drama, I just want to figure out what's going on, until there, I will just accept and push through it.

Thanks in advance!

Edited December 17, 2017 by Phill

[Faceless]

Meditation as it is generally practiced is mechanical. It’s concentration directed in a particular direction. A movement of thought. The opposite of what I thought was intended in liberation. Anything mechanical has its consequences such as addiction as pleasure, gratification, and so on. It becomes an escape and that escape is sustained by thought as pleasure. If we are mechanicaly drawn to this state we get caught in a movement of chasing that last experience.  

Real meditation is to have a religious mind. All day every day. To be attentive of innatention, not to spend an hour or two in concentration. 

Concentration implies control

attention implies objective awareness

The center in “becoming” is the cause to these side effects 

Just to watch thought 

which is to watch yourself 

??

 

 

 

[nightrider1435]

Yoga would probably be more beneficial for you. Try it out for awhile, see how it makes you feel. If not yoga then exercise. If 15 minute mediation sessions are causing you that much grief than I would suggest to maybe back off the mediation for a little bit, not forever though.

[Nahm]

@Phill what do you want, and what are the resistant thoughts you have against what you want?

Also, are you aware, marijuana, especially very potent, is associated most often with DP? 

Typically that, or a past trauma.

Also, if you were doing great, happy, etc - and meditation flipped that upside down, why are you meditating in the first place? 

[Phill]

Hey @Nahm 

I do not use any drugs, and I barely drink, even though I have used both in the past, after a while I noticed they were causing much more harm, than actually helping me.

Past Trauma might be definitely a reason, I was extremely sensitive when young and in my teens, when I reached my 16 years old I couldn't anymore handle living life how people are told to do, I drop out from school, didn't had a job, my anxiety was so bad I couldn't do anything, luckily I had family to support me through that time, I also was born in the worst of the worst times of my parents lives, my father company went bankrupt, we had no money to pay the bills, then I was born, 1 year later the situation got so bad, parents broke up, mom was left alone to take care of me and my brother and sister (which needs special attention, she's deaf), she manage to raise us working part time and contracting a baby sitter to take care of us. My father is an alcoholic, he has been living alone since he broke up with Mom, by the way I am 29 years old right now.

After I started meditating, for some reason, I started thinking a lot about my past, my parents, life, death, my purpose, I think it goes along with all this self actualize thing right.

I meditate because I did research on meditation benefits and how it alters your brain for the better, Leo also reinforced that, saw also the study on Harvard University on meditation, so I started giving it a try, once again.

Even being happy, meditation was just a technique/tool that I wanted to explore and see how much that can help me, because I am in search for more self awareness, calming my mind because my anxiety isn't perfect, I still get anxiety attacks sometimes, and also to develop more self discipline, I am just very very curious on this self development thing, and how I can become better, every single day.

 

 

[Phill]

Hey @nightrider1435 that's a great option, but would I have the same benefits of meditation?

I go jogging for 40-60 minute almost every day, I am not aware of yoga yet, but I will definitely give it up a try, thank you so much!

 

 

[Phill]

2 hours ago, Faceless said:

Meditation as it is generally practiced is mechanical. It’s concentration directed in a particular direction. A movement of thought. The opposite of what I thought was intended in liberation. Anything mechanical has its consequences such as addiction as pleasure, gratification, and so on. It becomes an escape and that escape is sustained by thought as pleasure. If we are mechanicaly drawn to this state we get caught in a movement of chasing that last experience.  

Real meditation is to have a religious mind. All day every day. To be attentive of innatention, not to spend an hour or two in concentration. 

Concentration implies control

attention implies objective awareness

The center in “becoming” is the cause to these side effects 

Just to watch thought 

which is to watch yourself 

??

 

 

 

 

Hey @Faceless

I just didn't manage to grasp what you meant, can you elaborate?

[ADD]

7 hours ago, Phill said:

Hey @Nahm

 

After I started meditating, for some reason, I started thinking a lot about my past, my parents, life, death, my purpose, I think it goes along with all this self actualize thing right.

 

 

I experienced the same, i had to fix and forgive my past mistakes to myself. You have started the awakening process in you. There's no way to stop it anymore, you can ignore it but it will bring even more pain. 

By being aware that the anxiety isn't you, it will be easier. If you start believing your thoughts as true, prepare yourself for dark times. Don't be afraif of your thoughts, yes they are scary, but they are just thoughts. You can't control your thoughts! Basicly everyone has OCD of some level our society just says it's normal.

I went through deep depression and anxiety that was risen by meditating. My advice to you is not to be afraid of the thoughts and to keep meditating.

 

[dude]

@Phill It could be that meditation is purging some of your past traumas. I'm no expert tho.

[Faceless]

@Phill ...what’s the first thing that you didn’t understand? Maybe we can go through it step by step. I’m guessing the first confusion was on behalf of the mechanical part. Is this right?

[WelcometoReality]

@Phill With that serious side effects I recommend to stop meditation altogether. There are other ways of finding truth, no need to torture yourself like that. Enjoy life!

[Phill]

9 hours ago, Faceless said:

@Phill ...what’s the first thing that you didn’t understand? Maybe we can go through it step by step. I’m guessing the first confusion was on behalf of the mechanical part. Is this right?

Hey Faceless, thanks for replying, I didn't understand:

 

"If we are mechanicaly drawn to this state we get caught in a movement of chasing that last experience. "

"Real meditation is to have a religious mind. All day every day. To be attentive of innatention, not to spend an hour or two in concentration. "

"The center in “becoming” is the cause to these side effects "

 

[Phill]

18 hours ago, ADD said:

I experienced the same, i had to fix and forgive my past mistakes to myself. You have started the awakening process in you. There's no way to stop it anymore, you can ignore it but it will bring even more pain. 

By being aware that the anxiety isn't you, it will be easier. If you start believing your thoughts as true, prepare yourself for dark times. Don't be afraif of your thoughts, yes they are scary, but they are just thoughts. You can't control your thoughts! Basicly everyone has OCD of some level our society just says it's normal.

I went through deep depression and anxiety that was risen by meditating. My advice to you is not to be afraid of the thoughts and to keep meditating.

 

Hey ADD!

Eventually that sadness dissipated with more and more meditation? How you feeling now? How long did your depression/anxiety lasted?

[Faceless]

@PhillThought as Mechanical.....We remeber the feeling we got from a particular pleasure say the pleasure of a drug of some kind. There’s the contact, sensation, feeling which is enjoyed...but then thought sets in and says “I like this” and records that as a memory. Then when the feeling subsides thought/memory/knowledge of that experience returns and says I want it again. This is pleasure. A mechanical process. 

Concentration vs attention and the religious mind .......There’s mediation as in trying to control the mind to be quiet. This is a form of concentration. A movment by will, a movment by the ego which is thought. But this action of concentration is an attempt to escape or suppress thoughts from arising. How can the “u” which is thought but thinks it’s phill suppress thoughts? Phill is a fragment of thought. But he doesn’t know it. When you say I want to suppress and quiet a certain thought a division is created between the thought and the entity you call phill. But there is only the thoughts. Do you see this ? Who’s suppressing? Who’s controlling? To control or suppress is to change “what is”, unwanted thoughts,  with an idea “I” a thought that will control these thoughts. U see its escaping what is actually happening because it brings anxiety, stresss, pain, sorrow, and so on. So if we escape these facts “happenings” we never face them and learn about the whole process in which they are born and die. Again in concentration and control to suppress  unwanted future thoughts it’s like being afraid to make mistakes and not participating because of the risk and therefore never learning. This type of meditation is to self sooth. If your doing it because you feel it’s good for you of course. If you just enjoy it that’s a different story....To have a religious mind means to have a scrupulous and conscientious mind. To be very careful in how the mind is moving from moment to moment throughout the day. Allowing, observing objectively, being aware without any motive or intention other than to watch. Because the fact is there’s nothing “you” can do anyhow. The “you” is a fragment of thought that thinks it has control over other thoughts. If this is the case and u see the that as a fact why bother?

Becoming........And as for becoming, “you” the center is always in a state of becoming. It’s always trying to fulfill a particular desire to bring about a sense of security, safety, or validation. Thought in the psychological realm depends on time “as in i want to be better and I will practice until I reach my goal in the future.” The problem with this is you are not accepting”what is now” and you are saying that time will solve your problem. U see the I am not better idea now is a thought, self created image, conclusion held according to a reaction you have had or have because of perhaps what another has told you, your conditioning, circumstances, past experiences that you accepted or set as an expectation. The center which always has fear in the background is always in a state of becoming. It wants to be happy, not sad. It wants to be validated, not ignored. It wants to achieve, and until it does it is miserable. It wants and nothing else is more important. It obsesses and suffers until it goes insane. 

Becoming in meditation.........As for concentrated meditation, there’s a constant movement to achieve this goal. You become stressed out because you feel you are not doing well, or that maybe you are doing it all wrong. It’s a constant battle with yourself who if you look close enough is nothing but a series of images that constitute the entity you call phill. 

 

I don’t want to keep jabbering on. I feel like maybe I have already spoiled this most excellent pathless journey for you already. I could go on and on. But if you care enough you will see this all on your own. Try and find one who can act as a mirror to yourself to guide you along. To help you learn the art of inquiry. How to ask important questions. To have the capacity to live with a sense of order and have a mind that can be rational, logical, reasonable, and a mind that is sensitive, sharp, and quiet. If someone else can do this so can you.  Psychological division only exsists within the realm of thought.  See this fact my friend. The rest is yours to explore.  

This is the art of life??

 

Edited December 19, 2017 by Faceless

[ADD]

5 hours ago, Phill said:

Hey ADD!

Eventually that sadness dissipated with more and more meditation? How you feeling now? How long did your depression/anxiety lasted?

The thing is, the anxiety and fear of disease hit me so bad i quit meditation completely. I couldn't even go to work anymore. The fear took complete hold of my life. I went through all kind of doctors and they found nothing wrong with me. Then i ended up to psychotherapist who practiced mindfulness with me and i started meditating again. The worst part lasted 5 months, then it gradually got better. I'm doing fine now, there's some negativity still inside me but i have the control of myself now. Meditation brought me back to life.

[Phill]

32 minutes ago, ADD said:

The thing is, the anxiety and fear of disease hit me so bad i quit meditation completely. I couldn't even go to work anymore. The fear took complete hold of my life. I went through all kind of doctors and they found nothing wrong with me. Then i ended up to psychotherapist who practiced mindfulness with me and i started meditating again. The worst part lasted 5 months, then it gradually got better. I'm doing fine now, there's some negativity still inside me but i have the control of myself now. Meditation brought me back to life.

Wow that kind of resonates with me, when I was young, 17 years old, friends and me had jelly in the head and started using thinner solvent as a drug, since I was young and dumb, gone with them, after 3 days using it, we decided to stop, but the effect would come back after a couple of hours only in me, but all my friends were fine they said, since everyone was fine but I wasn't, I had a panic attack and create a extremely rigid belief that, I had caused irreparable brain damage in myself, it took me around 3 years to finally surrender and let that belief go. So I was exactly like you, in a huge anxiety and fear, couldn't even go out of my room basically, couldn't eat, I was psychologically wrecked. Toughest time in my life, mental trap!

 

 

 

[ADD]

@Phill

It's like facing your own death almost. I'm quite happy i had to experience that. It gave me an explosion for mental growth. The growing is still happening at insane speed. I'm not forced to follow my own thoughts anymore. And that's a huge power.

I'm not quite sure what happened to me back then. I was living very unconciously 3 years ago just bangin random chicks and killing myself at work for earning more money. I then started to notice there was this deep sadness inside me when i was alone. Even though by looking externally i was living my dream with penthouse,sports car and multiple fuckbuddies to choose from. I started to think why i wasn't happy and went very philosophical about it. Then i found about meditation and started the habit. 3 months before the total breakdown i had meditation session where i suddenly felt amazing feel of joy and saw all the colours insanely bright and saturated. I had tears falling from my eyes it felt so good. I think the fear and anxiety that came 3 months later was some sort of ego's fight back.

However my life is completely different to what it was before the breakdown. I'm actually doing better in all terms. Even switched my dead end job to study at university.

[Nahm]

@Phill I think if you start at the top and read your posts here, you’ll see that your issue is not from meditation, but from awakening to the fact that you can choose to leave your past and start focusing on what you want in your life. The more you focus on that, and only that, then by default, you have stopped focusing on your past. Stop letting your past have something to do with your future. 

[Phill]

4 hours ago, Nahm said:

@Phill I think if you start at the top and read your posts here, you’ll see that your issue is not from meditation, but from awakening to the fact that you can choose to leave your past and start focusing on what you want in your life. The more you focus on that, and only that, then by default, you have stopped focusing on your past. Stop letting your past have something to do with your future. 

Hey Nahm, thanks for your answer!

Like, I don't have any strong emotions from the past, or at least I am not conscious about it, I just mentioned things from the past just to inform, but I do not think it's my real issue here, at least it doesn't feel like that, today I fully accepted so many things, like I said, it became very clear to me @Nahm that everytime I started meditating this would happen, funny enough that anxiety and angryness is already dissipating in a faster pace than before, so that's good news!

 

[Nahm]

@Phill that’s great to hear!