What can happen when you meditate?

In 2021 I published an academic article intended for new meditators. It was about:

• What can happen in meditation?

• What is it like?

• Where can it lead?

And I added a brief mention that the experience may not be beneficial to everyone – how come and who should be careful?

I’ve put a link to my original academic article at the end of this blog post, if you want to read the whole thing. And I hope that this post is more accessible than the academic article.

At the start of that article I summarised the benefits of meditation and the reasons people do it, including:

• improving health and well-being

• improving self-understanding and 

• awakening or achieving enlightenment (however you think of that)… 

To reach many of the benefits you have to meditate a while, at least several weeks or longer. However some, such as awakening permanently or having awakening experiences, can be experienced at any point, from the first time you meditate or at any time thereafter!

So after giving a bit of background about my meditation experience, which started over 40 years ago, I got on to the research that I did:

Roughly speaking, research with people can either get small amounts of data from lots of people and then analyse it statistically. Or, at the other extreme, it can study one or a few people and get a large amount of data from each of them. This study was carried out during the covid lockdown in the UK in 2020 and involved getting a LOT of data from one person – me! Mainly because that was the only kind of research with people that was possible at that time, apart from online research.

Over the course of two months I meditated for 90 mins a day, followed immediately by 30 mins writing notes on everything that happened during that day’s meditation.

I analysed those notes and sorted them into categories or themes of the things that happened most often, using a technique called thematic analysis.

From that analysis, the three main things that happened during my meditations were:

1. Having thoughts and feelings about meditation that happened while I was meditating. This included my judgements about the process such as “If all I’m doing is sitting and thinking can I really call it a meditation?”. Although such thoughts are common experiences for most meditators I also noticed that I thought I should be beyond such things, after all these years! In fact noticing that theme subsequently helped me to let go of those judgements – a useful outcome of the study for me and hopefully for others too.

2. The second common experience was of changes in sensations or sense perceptions while I was meditating. This included things like changes in time perception, where time was experienced as longer or shorter than usual. Some meditations even felt completely timeless – an unusual sensation for me at that time.

I also sometimes perceived things more intensely straight after the meditation – objects looking more vivid or brighter than usual, for example.

3. Finally some meditations included unusual states of consciousness. For example, during a number of the meditations there were experiences of profound, transpersonal states, and sometimes blissful states. At that time I knew of no framework within which to understand such states. It was only after the research stage, when I was writing up the article, that I came across some Buddhist texts on the deep states of concentration called the jhanas. 

These are profoundly positive states that we can notice while meditating. They have not been written about as much as other aspects of meditation, but I have enjoyed exploring them since finishing the study and publishing the article.

For anyone interested in exploring these states I recommend Leigh Brassington’s book, ‘Right Concentration’ or watching his videos on YouTube. 

Later still, and too late to mention in the article, I also came across the writings of the Christian mystic and nun St. Teresa of Avila on what she termed the mansions of the ‘Inner Castle’, which also describe highly positive inner states.

Just to emphasise, these three types of experience are all things that can happen whether you are a beginner or are a very experienced meditator.

I’d like to also mention briefly that some people do have adverse or unpleasant experiences while meditating.

Some, such as boredom or agitation are relatively common, particularly in the early days of meditating. However, a few people can have more negative reactions. At their most serious (and thankfully rare), some people may even feel distressed while meditating. 

As I say, such experiences seem to be rare and they seem to happen mainly on long and intense meditation retreats to people who have had mental health problems, but it’s worth knowing that they can happen so, if you don’t like the way a meditation is going, just stop and don’t let anyone persuade you to “keep on meditating and work through it”! Such comments are usually made by people who have little or no knowledge of mental health.

Anyway, thankfully, for most people, the experience of meditation is overwhelmingly positive and beneficial. 

Finally, everyone’s experience is different, but I hope this gives you at least some idea of the sorts of things that can happen.

So, for those of you just starting to give meditation a try, I wish you well in your explorations.

Thank you for reading this far.

–

Links:

A summary of research into the health benefits of meditation can be found at https://palousemindfulness.com/resources/research.html

A link to my original academic article at https://www.academia.edu/45550595/The_Inner_Life_of_An_Experienced_Meditator_From_Shopping_Lists_to_Awakening