Anxiety - meditation

[Tizzylizzy]

Hi there :)

Since birth of DC I've had mahoosive anxiety issues. In my desperation to find something that helps I tried meditating.

I had a really lovely experience early on where something spoke to me saying 'everything was going to be okay.' Then had only what I can describe as orgasms all over my body!!! I'm well aware that sounds a bit loopy and I was surprised as anyone. I'm much more open minded now. I managed to reach this state through focusing on a candle and repeating a phrase in my head, clearing it of thought. Anyone familiar with what this experience meant/was?

Unfortunately my blissful experience wasn't to be recreated. And my anxiety is still bad. My meditating tapered off.

Now when I try it though my mind seems to just throw up utter gobledegook. Kind of like that weirdness you get before dropping off to sleep. And I actually don't find it very pleasant, more confusing than anything which isn't great for my anxiety.

Should I persevere? Anyone have any similar experiences/feedback?

Hello. I'd say persevere, but not in a 'I will crack this meditating thing' way, but in a 'it's normal to get distracted by my busy mind and I'm going to be kind to myself' way.

I too suffered back from anxiety for most of my life, but I don't anymore. I believe in the Divine, as a part of all of us, and as something that connects us all. If I had the experience you had, I would have thought it was my inner voice, or it her self, having the chance to speak once I had managed to still my chattering egoic mind.

Have you read A New Earth by Ekhart Tolle? That explains the ego/self thing well.

And don't worry about getting distracted - it's totally normal and part of the process. I wonder if you're in some way telling yourself off for your mind wandering? The best thing to do is to notice your mind wandering - just notice, don't judge; no huffing and saying 'oh for god's sake, I'm doing it again! I'm crap at meditating,' - and lovingly and kindly draw your attention back to your breath.

When we start to learn that we have a higher self, and that the ego is false, our ego doesn't like it. It does everyone it can to protect itself and shouts even louder than before at first. What you've done is, after years of living trapped by your ego, discovered and opened the door to your soul - the beautiful outside full of light and love and truth - but your ego, your captor, has realised and has double locked that door. What you need to do now is to learn how to distinguish between your ego and your soul/higher self (Christians would call this the voices of the Devil and of God) and keep at it until you are able to still your egoic anxiety attacks by calling on your higher self for strength.

What have you done to learn meditation? Is it worth trying a different book, or a course? Or maybe you need other ways to connect with the Divine - ritual, chanting, yoga (not the physical centred Western yoga, but the deeper heart of yoga), prayer, visualisation or journeying?

Whereabouts do you live? Is there anything local going on that you could connect with to learn other ways to connect with your higher self? You may need to step outside of your comfort zone, but it's probably worth it.

On the other hand, trusting that each stage - the seemingly backward ones, as well as the forward ones - are part of your journey and that the right things will step into your path when you are ready for them is probably really helpful too.

Hi Tizzy - long time meditator and anxiety sufferer here ! I sit with a buddhist meditation group, but essentially, all meditation is really gently placing your awareness on one thing and letting everything else come and go. It is not uncommon to have pleasant experiences when meditating (the buddha has his cheeky smile for a reason!) but if you expect / want something specific to happen, the ego/personality gets involved and it generates a lot of mental activity. As Flamingo rightly says, the best instruction is to focus on your meditation object and just let thoughts / sensation happen and don't expect anything / judge anything (especially whether you are 'doing it right'). It takes a while to train you mind/awareness to be able to focus on one thing. I would also recommend Eckhart Tolle's books - The Power of Now and Stillness Speaks are the ones I personally found most useful. The only thing is that Eckhart doesn't really teach 'formal' meditation as such. I would strongly recommend trying to find a meditation group/teacher to sit with if possible. It can be very helpful. Good luck and keep practicing !

Wow!! Thank you both for you lovely, considered responses! A lot of my anxiety centres around death and that being the end - and so my lovely experience early on gave me hope it wasn't if that makes sense? I previously thought meditating was a load of New Age mumbo jumbo but it made me feel that this thing they call spirituality wasn't tosh! Does tha make sense?

As it's tapered off my doubting Thomas of a mind has once again convinced me that there is nothing, that what happened was all a trick in the mind, but it seemed so real at the time. I was thrilled! Funny FlamingoBingo you say about us all being connected - you've reminded me that I felt 'at one' with the universe. And for a huge sceptic like me that was huge!

Thank you both for your recommendations. I'm going to crack on with it. What do you both believe happens after death? Had meditating given you a faith as such? Do you think it can help in that way too?

Tizzy, you could be me! I felt the same - hippy woo stuff being a load of tosh. Now I'm very, very hippy woo myself and it's changed my life entirely!

Personally I'm not 100% sure what I believe happens after death. I believe that our spirits choose their parents, and that they choose them for a reason. I don't believe in co-incidence. I believe we're sent what we need when we need it, and that everything in life helps us grow, if we're connected enough to our spirits to use what we're thrown!

So I guess I'm coming to believing in destiny...but that we have a part to play in destiny IYSWIM. We can do things that make it harder, or do things that make it easier. There seems to be a real spiritual awakening happening right now, which some people believe is the real message behind the 2012 prophecy, and that the world as we know it will end, but not in some cataclysmic explosion, but in a shift from egoic, capitalistic, power-based, masculine-skewed living to a more feminine, loving, compassionate way of living so that the universe is once more in balance.

Meditation didn't give me faith, but along with the other spiritual stuff I do, it helps. It's my daily spiritual top-up time and I do it after half an hour of yoga. Meditation is about practising being mindful so that you can live more mindfully when you're not meditating. It's about practising hearing and distinguishing between your ego and your soul.

But the most important thing is not to judge and not to expect - if you're doing that, your ego is in control. Just let go of thoughts - someone said to me it's like lying on the bank of a river and slipping in sometimes. Don't get cross and frustrated, just say 'Oh, I've slipped in, I'll just swim back to the bank again'. Watch your breath and when you notice your mind has wandered, just bring your attention back to your breath again - no judgement, no anger, and no expectations.

Hi Tizzy - more good advice from Flamingo ! I came to meditation via Tai Chi and as a jobbing scientist, I never used to believe in anything spiritual. Over the years I have become a serious Buddhist practitioner. I don't believe in a creator god (i.e. 'man in the sky') and traditional Buddhist thought is that at the point of death the components that come together to make the appearance of an individual self are sort of 'recycled'.

The physical stuff is obviously recycled, and the mental stuff is recycled too (this is called 'rebirth', rather than reincarnation). In buddhism there is no eternal soul (this is eternalism) but death is not the absolute end (this is materialism the concept that everything is physical stuff).

The Buddhist concept of rebirth is somewhere in between and sort of says that aspects of your consciousness get recycled in a new living being. A few very, very experienced meditators (not me!) have had experiences that are a bit like past life regression. Rebirth is not like reincarnation though, as that implies a continuous discrete soul, which Buddha argued against as he saw everything (physical and mental) as impermanent and interconnected - a bit like a lot of little streams of water coming together and flowing apart and coming together again (although the streams are of matter and energy and consciousness). This idea is similar in some ways to what spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle say. His way of putting it is that we all different manifestations of consciousness that come and go and the only thing that is permanent is the field of consciousness which forms living beings to experience itself.

Both Eckhart and the buddha taught that stress/suffering/unsatisfactoriness ('dukkha' in Buddhism) arise as our tendency as humans is to build up our egoic sense of self or 'I' and try to protect it at all costs by clinging to pleasure / pushing away pain.

By being present in the moment (either during sitting meditation or by general everyday 'mindfulness', or via yoga/taichi/other mind-body techniques) - we learn to see the mind for what it is and see that there is a gap between our thoughts and our innate awareness. This releases a lot of stress and tension and lets you work with the mind rather the mind working you.

Hope that helps!

This is so interesting! Thanks so much for all the info - great tips Flamingo.

Cockneydad - what have been the reactions of friends/family to your spirituality considering your job? And what ate your thoughts re. the 'bad' that happens in the world and why? Childhood cancers etc?

Tizzy, I'm just reading a book now that is gripping me totally and teaching me a lot more about ego/consciousness. It's called Women who run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Hi Tizzy - it's fine - most of my family / close friends and some work colleagues know that I'm into meditation. I also have fellow scientist colleagues who are devout church-goers and atheists and everything in between.

Buddhist philosophy can be quite complex on causes of suffering and there is a lot of nonsense spoken in the popular press about 'bad' kamma/karma. Kamma just means action - doing something unskillful, will probably lead to stress/suffering, whereas something skillful will probably be beneficial.

The simplest approach is to remember that (for whatever reason or even a lack of reasons) there is suffering in the world and that trying to 'be with' the suffering in a mindful way (that is when you can't do anything about it) and not judging it or mentally pushing it away, can take some of the 'sting' out out of it. It is a simple fact of life that there will always be some things that can cause suffering - sickness, old age, death, loss of loved ones.

However, on a much more positive note (!) Buddha also taught that an awful lot of our suffering/stress/unhappiness is caused by the way the mind reacts to it, often by pushing away things it doesn't want and clinging to things we think pleasurable. By using mindfulness techniques (i.e. being consciously aware and letting thoughts come and go without judging/over analyzing) we can neutralize a lot (most?) of the negativity, or at least not make it any worse.

In addition, mindfulness (or 'open awareness', or 'present moment awareness') can also lead to relaxed, joyous states during the 'ordinary times' - i.e. when things are relatively normal. Mindfulness can be developed when we are washing up, doing the laundry, walking the dog etc., as well as during sitting meditation.

Eckhart Tolle writes well about many of aspects of mindfulness and 'surrendering' to suffering and in fairly accessible language. The Buddha said a lot on it too which actually is quite similar, but it is not so easy to access in many of the introductory books. There are a couple of exceptions though.

Hope that helps !

Thank you guys! Leaning a lot here, So basically this Eckhart guy knows his stuff. Flamingo - I'm heading off to Amazon now!

Tizzy - Tolle basically boils down a lot of the teachings of many religions' wisest guides - Buddha, Jesus etc.

You can watch Oprah's online webcast thingy which may be helpful - discussions with Tolle himself. She has heaps of online spiritual awakening stuff you may want to access as well - have an explore.

Now we're talking Flamingo - I need a accessibility!

I should have said - there is loads of Eckhart stuff on youtube ! If you get into Eckhart's teaching you could also try Gangaji - she is similar too. If you get into the buddhist thing, I can recommend some stuff also!