I also experienced something similar. While meditating at work I experienced a state of profound bliss and extreme bodily sensations. What followed this was a disintegration where I dropped into an existential crisis that lasted for about a year. However during this time I faced a number of demons which I hadn’t been able to face up until that point. Now, about 5 years later I am in a good place and am ramping up my meditation practice once more.
Meditation is what it says on the tin, a way to uncover real truth. It’s powerful and dangerous. It’s a path for truth seekers, who are willing to pay whatever it takes to see what is truly there. For me its a blessing.
For most these experiences are ones of positive disintegration rather than negative. After the dark night of the soul has passed we find ourselves more fully integrated than before.
For many that’s not something they were after and in this way I agree with the article, meditation is being miss sold.
If you are open to sharing, what did you do, if anything, to make it through the year of crisis? Did you stop meditating like the author, seek outside help, continue meditating or something else?
I went to a therapist to work through the things that had come up. The existential crisis also led to a re-evaluation of the nature of reality - I now hold a panpsychist position. But the philosophical stuff, no therapist was going to be on my level and able to help. So that stuff I worked through on my own.
I stopped meditating as a practice immediately. I toyed with it sometimes during everyday life, watching the trees go passed on the train, trying to be indifferent as strong emotions rocked me. I was mostly too preoccupied with redefining who I was to be bothered by further exploration.
Also note that I was not strongly aware of the connection between the experience I had meditating and the psychological disintegration that followed. I considered it a possibility, but not a strong one. For me it was just an evolution that was in progress. A darkness that had to be faced and an existential horror that I had to make peace with.
It's only after the fact that I can clearly see the connection. Perhaps it is coincidence, but I think it is more likely not.
Meditation is what it says on the tin, a way to uncover real truth. It’s powerful and dangerous. It’s a path for truth seekers, who are willing to pay whatever it takes to see what is truly there. For me its a blessing.
For most these experiences are ones of positive disintegration rather than negative. After the dark night of the soul has passed we find ourselves more fully integrated than before.
For many that’s not something they were after and in this way I agree with the article, meditation is being miss sold.