Help Me Understand What Occurred In Me Last Year

[Shaggy]

Last year Jan 2016 I was determined to start a daily meditation habit for 20 minutes. I was very diligent with my practice until 4 months later when something drastic happened to my consciousness. It started subtly and gradually increased by several magnitudes.

My meditation practice was the "do nothing" method.

My meditation sessions would make me feel "in a focused and clear" state. I felt that I had more energy throughout the day and was overall more productive in my life. I saw this initially as some positive side effects from meditating daily.

In April I started to feel euphoric and so full of energy (more than previously). I became extremely outgoing and started to eat and sleep less. When I would get home I would sleep for 3 hours and then meditate some more. While meditating I received a "revelation", and I "realised" that reality is an illusion and life is meaningless. I became paranoid and experienced reality as Orwellian. I believed I had a recollection of "my past lives" and I was the reincarnation of Gandhi and decided to go on a hunger strike for a few days. I also started to hallucinate a bit.

What happened afterwards is I got sent to mental institution and was diagnosed with acute psychosis and got prescribed anti psychotic drugs and had to go through a lengthy rehabilitation process.

I came to learn recently that meditation could lead to some negative consequences especially if you have had a past of abuse (which I do). I was not aware of this fact prior to starting meditation which I did because of all the positive effects I have heard about it.

What I want to know is what exactly occurred in me?

Did I experience a kundalini awakening or the dark knight of the soul? Or something else?

Let me clarify that under this process I did not intake any form of alcohol or drugs prior to getting rehabilitated. I also was NOT under the guide of a teacher when exploring meditation.

[cetus]

Lifestyle magazines brim with mindfulness features and the global advertising giant JWT listed mindful living as one of its 10 trends to shape the world in 2014 as consumers develop "a quasi-Zen desire to experience everything in a more present, conscious way".

But psychiatrists have now sounded a warning that as well as bringing benefits, mindfulness meditation can have troubling side-effects. Evidence is also emerging of underqualified teachers presenting themselves as mindfulness experts, including through the NHS.

The concern comes not from critics of mindfulness but from supporters, such as Dr Florian Ruths, consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley hospital in south London. He has launched an investigation into adverse reactions to MBCT, which have included rare cases of "depersonalisation", where people feel like they are watching themselves in a film.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm for mindfulness-based therapies and they are very powerful interventions," Ruths said. "But they can also have side-effects. Mindfulness is delivered to potentially vulnerable people with mental illness, including depression and anxiety, so it needs to be taught by people who know the basics about those illnesses, and when to refer people for specialist help."

His inquiry follows the "dark night" project at Brown University in the US, which has catalogued how some Buddhist meditators have been assailed by traumatic memories. Problems recorded by Professor Willoughby Britton, the lead psychiatrist, include "cognitive, perceptual and sensory aberrations", changes in their sense of self and impairment in social relationships. One Buddhist monk, Shinzen Young, has described the "dark night" phenomenon as an "irreversible insight into emptiness" and "enlightenment's evil twin".

Mindfulness experts say such extreme adverse reactions are rare and are most likely to follow prolonged periods of meditation, such as weeks on a silent retreat. But the studies represent a new strain of critical thinking about mindfulness meditation amid an avalanche of hype.

MBCT is commonly taught in groups in an eight-week programme and courses sell out fast. Ed Halliwell, who teaches in London and West Sussex, said some of his courses fill up within 48 hours of their being announced.

"You can sometimes get the impression from the enthusiasm that is being shown about it helping with depression and anxiety that mindfulness is a magic pill you can apply without effort," he said. "You start watching your breath and all your problems are solved. It is not like that at all. You are working with the heart of your experiences, learning to turn towards them, and that is difficult and can be uncomfortable."

Mindfulness is spreading fast into village halls, schools and hospitals and even the offices of banks and internet giants such as Google.

"It is worrying," said Rebecca Crane, director of the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice in Bangor, which has trained 2,500 teachers in the past five years. "People come along to our week-long teacher training retreat and then are put under pressure to get teaching very quickly.

Exeter University has launched an inquiry into how 43 NHS trusts across the UK are meeting the ballooning demand for MBCT.

Marie Johansson, clinical lead at Oxford University's mindfulness centre, stressed the need for proper training of at least a year until health professionals can teach meditation, partly because on rare occasions it can throw up "extremely distressing experiences".

"Taking the course is quite challenging," she said. "You need to be reasonably stable and well. Noticing what is going on in your mind and body may be completely new and you may discover that there are patterns of thinking and acting and behaving that no longer serve you well. There might be patterns that interfere with living a healthy life and seeing those patterns can bring up lots of reactions and it can be too much to deal with. Unless it is handled well, the person could close down, go away with an increase in self-criticism and feeling they have failed."

Finding the right teacher is often difficult for people approaching mindfulness for the first time. Leading mindfulness teaching organisations, including the universities of Oxford, Bangor and Exeter, are now considering establishing a register of course leaders who meet good practice guidelines. They expect mindfulness teachers to train for at least a year and to remain under supervision. Some Buddhists have opposed the idea, arguing it is unreasonable to regulate a practice rooted in a religion.

Lokhadi, a mindfulness meditation teacher in London for the past nine years, has regular experience of some of the difficulties mindfulness meditation can throw up.

"While mindfulness meditation doesn't change people's experience, things can feel worse before they feel better," she said. "As awareness increases, your sensitivity to experiences increases. If someone is feeling vulnerable or is not well supported, it can be quite daunting. It can bring up grief and all kinds of emotions, which need to be capably held by an experienced and suitably trained teacher.

"When choosing a course you need to have a sense of the training of the teacher, whether they are supervised and whether they themselves practise meditation. Most reputable teacher training courses require a minimum of two years' meditation practice and ensure that teachers meet other important criteria."

[Vingger]

I also thought i was the reincarnation of [insert random guru here] 

the best you can do about all this stuff is just go on your meditation

to not acumulate useless mental information

when you have a true insight it will look true to the bones five minutes an hour a month later

 

[Martin123]

@Shaggy yeah the whole mental health field are a bunch of pussies. When you start releasing your inner demons it isnt your everyday experience.

If you want "normal" life dont meditate homie, take anti depressants eat trash and watch Tv.

Sorry fot the passive agressive attitude but I am mad at people who claim "negative effeects of meditation" what hapened to you was the most valuable life experience one can ever have and pussies screw this up.

 

edit: their reaction should have been: its ok, keep at it, you will turn out ok and much better than before. If you need help to process these phases here are some great therapists/coaches...

Instead they give u diagnosis and drugs.

such wow, much society, very loving

Edited March 26, 2017 by Martin123

[pluto]

"What happened afterwards is I got sent to mental institution and was diagnosed with acute psychosis and got prescribed anti psychotic drugs and had to go through a lengthy rehabilitation process."

That's what they do to kids with ADHD(and other false disorders) and that's when their connection to source is severely damaged by the drugs and if they continue taking them, by the time they become adults they become fully certified zombies of modern society, unable to think or even imagine for themselves.

That part really upsets me too.

We all had past abuse, what was happening to you was quite normal when it comes to awakening and reconnecting with the higher mind(If you will) and those types of phenomenons its just that we were never taught about them especially in the west thus when something does occur that hardly anyone knows about, the first thought is mental help and first method is drugs that DO NOT belong in the human body.

Instead of drugs they should do natural therapy first and i don't even mean taking any herbs initially but simply going on a walk in the forest or anywhere in nature that is near-silent and calm. Its better than modern therapy but then again there is no profit in those methods thus why natural medicine that works is now called alternative medicine as there is no profit in cures.

[Magic]

@cetus56, great answer, very valuable, should be heavily upvoted. Could you please share some related links?

[cetus]

@Magic I just Googled adverse reactions to meditation and found this.  Thanks!

[Shaggy]

@pluto I absolutely agree with you. Thankfully I am done with my medication treatment and I have resumed meditation practice for the last 5 months. My sessions don't make me feel in a"higher" state anymore, which is fine. I have started trying out mindfulness meditation and I like it. I will probably also try out the different types that @Leo Gura has suggested in his videos. Only thing that has happened since I have started meditation again is 2 really "life like" nightmares. I do see a therapist for help and i'm considering to seek out a teacher who can guide me on my spiritual journey.

[Anirban657]

@Shaggy did you experience ego dissolution? 

[Shaggy]

@Anirban657  I guess you can say so. I felt that I "broke free" from a spell and could finally "live" my life. In my mind at that time I felt that  I was an essence that has relived countless of past lives and that "shaggy" that I knew was dead.

[Anirban657]

@Shaggy It happened to me too. In my case I became very neurotic and judgemental for a few days. I realised that being judgemental was ruining my peace of mind and happiness. So I started writing all my horrible judgements in a journal. By the way I am alright now and I realised that my mind was deceiving me into believing a fantasy. Now I am reading that journal I wrote and I realised the extent to which my mind deceived me. I think writing a journal is very helpful ,so you may try that. My mind made me do things that I wouldn't do if I am sane. 

[Shaggy]

@Anirban657 Thanks for the tip. I will do this if I go through it again.