When Meditation Goes Wrong: 6 Secret Facts About Altered States of Awareness

PREFACE

Today’s article is written in response to a reader’s appeal for help. Since many readers are writing to me with problems that are relatively common to everyone, I will occasionally write articles to benefit not only the querant, but also to be of assistance to the spiritually-seeking public, many of whom can benefit as well.

The comment below was submitted under the article, “Spirit Guides in the Great Circle of Life.”

Hello- happy to have found this short thread as I have a question that relates to it. I have a meditation practice and am able to connect to my guides. However, despite intentions for the highest good, and aura protection I encounter negative engeries (sic) sometimes. I may be perhaps tired but not feeling negative when starting my meditations and it is upsetting to me when this happens – almost to the point where I am reluctant to continue. Asking for specific help (AA Michael, God, Jesus) seems to have no immediate effect and where are the guides that are supposed to protect me?!). Your insights and comments are sincerely appreciated. Thank you.

Today’s topic about meditation backlash –a matter of safety during altered states of awareness—has been brought to my attention numerous times by people in the last few weeks who are experiencing invasive energies and related problems due to deficiencies in their metaphysical understanding. Clearly, with religious affiliations on the decline and spiritual practices growing in popularity there is a corresponding need for the information that follows.

But before I get to the body of this article (and as stated elsewhere on this website), readers should know that I am unable to provide personal assistance in an email or comment forum. Nevertheless, a day doesn’t go by but what people from all over the world reach out to me for help. I encourage readers with real problems to take the initiative to order a session with me instead of leaving their troubling situations to the chance that I will respond to them from the long list of daily appeals for guidance.

As for the dear individual who wrote the question above, this information may or may not help her adequately or do justice to her own need for mentoring. Why is that? Without tuning in to a person’s circumstances and very personal energy imprint as done in a live session, much important information cannot be plumbed in a one-size-fits-all response.

Having said all of that, I present all of you a gift from my heart in the form of knowledge you can use. I sincerely hope you feel the love and find this to be worthy guidance for your precious life.

Meditation is Very Good for You When Undertaken with Purpose, Knowledge, and Wisdom

In our materialistic, hectic and crazy world it’s a matter of course to get scattered, stressed, and completely out-of-touch with the spiritual foundation of life. Every person on the planet needs a daily spiritual practice to stay sane and balanced amidst the chaos going on around them and to find spiritual direction in their lives by first coming to know the greater truth about themselves. The greater truth deep within you is the “Big Truth” our dependency-oriented social structure does not want you to discover. It would change everything. EVERYTHING. ─Which would be very good for the planet and her beings, but not good for those who peddle, proliferate, and profit from control and exploitation.

Meditation happens to be one of the many methods used for daily spiritual practice. It’s an age-old spiritual tradition that provides a way to connect with one’s purpose in life and rise above what can seem like an otherwise terminal and empty existence. With meditation, one can discover a remarkable sense of inner divinity that can’t be achieved through the hand-me-down dogmas of priest-authority traditions which by their very nature are belief systems that deny the right of direct access to one’s relationship with the divine.

Disciplined forms of spiritual meditation originated with the Eastern Hindu and Buddhist religions, and as such is very foreign to people who have been conditioned with Western Christian beliefs. As a philosophy of direct connection to inner empowerment, meditation has been frowned upon by traditional Christian dictates but in spite of a long history of religious resistance, there is now a sweeping trend across the social strata to accept meditation as a recommended therapy for mental and physical distress.

Scientific studies have shown meditation to:
1. Increase resilience, mental balance, and happiness;
2. Increase empathy and expand the ability to have compassion;
3. Improve intelligence and attention;
4. Decrease or eliminate anxiety and high-strung reactions; eliminate the effects of subliminal stress such as startle syndrome;
5. Greatly improve personal relations;
6. Initiate emotional balance and even out mood swings;
7. Strengthen immune system function and promote physical healing;
8. Stimulate creativity and problem solving;
9. Improve memory and learning;
10.Lower high blood pressure and overcome addictions;
11. Help with post-traumatic stress disorder;
12. Improve sleep.

Now as to the spiritual benefits of meditation, science cannot measure this and while that’s to be expected, the spiritual rewards are impressive. On the spiritual level, meditation:
1. Is a threshold to interacting with Greater Reality (the non-physical, spiritual reality we cannot discern with our physical senses);
2. Provides personal insight about truth and exposes deception (including self-deception);
3. Attunes one to the Soul, the eternal and non-physical nature of one’s existence;
4. Raises personal vibration to a positive state and initiates spiritual gifts;
5. Clears out mental clutter that gets in the way of inspired guidance;
6. Provides purpose, direction and deep inner calm;
7. Builds courage and personal strength, cures fearful, anxious states;
8. Provides comfort and a sense of being loved, increases empathy and understanding;
9. Heals hurt and instills forgiveness, heals relationship issues;
10. Builds personal and spiritual power and empowers healthy personality traits, which changes life trajectories for the better;
11. Connects one to Cosmic Consciousness.

These 23 items are not all the benefits of meditation but are certainly enough to make a sensible human wonder, “Why would a person not meditate?!”

The unconditional answer to that question is simple and will come as a surprise to most. Out of those 23 reasons why one should meditate, there is one pivotal reason not to. A person should not meditate if they are not spiritually prepared to enter into an altered state of consciousness. (And, for certain psychiatric conditions meditation is not advisable unless under medical supervision.)

Spiritual preparation before meditation is not a technique—even though the technique of aura protection as presented below is a critical part of preparing to meditate. Spiritual preparation involves a decent education about your own psyche, along with an understanding of how your mind may integrate with the many levels of reality that interface with meditative experiences.

One Man’s Meditation is Another Man’s Fishing Trip

There are countless articles, books, and information about what meditation is, along with the preliminary “how-to’s”. Much of what is out there is relatively shallow, brief, and geared to the lowest common denominator of a majority of people who want to get spiritual without having to think about it too much.

The word, “meditation”, describes a broad variety of self-centering practices, along with an array of differing motives and objectives by practitioners. There is really no definitive definition of meditation because of cultural shadings, mixed objectives, and melting-pot methods.

Thus, many people say they “meditate” without really knowing what meditation is…or if they are really meditating. A good many people will say that they meditate when in fact their meditation is a mere moment of relaxation. For them, it may be a day on the lake fishing or time spent watching the birds. Some people will say that meditation is what they do to “get in touch with myself”, or finding a peaceful moment to alleviate stress or pain. Others meditate in the hopes of connecting with Cosmic Mind or to become spiritually enlightened, such as receiving help from their Guides. There are visualization meditations (using the imagination to envision something) and mind-emptying meditations (stilling random thoughts to arrive at a silent mind).The list of potential motives that people have for “meditating” goes on…and the same with their methods.

This is one of those situations where a little bit of knowledge can be an unwise thing, for many who meditate undertake a foray into Greater Spiritual Reality without any knowledge of what they are doing, how to do it, or what really occurs if they happen to be successful. In fact, true and successful meditation undertaking by a novice seeker requires a qualified personal mentor.

At the very least, meditation and/or any other mind-altering action should never be just a fishing expedition to see what happens next. And, under no circumstances should altered states of consciousness be entered into when there is the use of recreational drugs such a marijuana or ceremonial drugs such as peyote unless one is properly initiated in that ceremonial tradition, nor alcohol use, (even a “light glass of wine”). That means, if you help yourself to a sip of bubbly or a toke of Mary Jane to get “mellow” prior to meditation or if you regularly use these substances, you might as well decide to stroll naked down a dark alley in the worst section of the city just to see if you come out the other side unscathed. It’s a lunatic risk.

Further, when engaging in mediumship; psychic readings; channeling; focused use of pendulums; focused reading of Tarot cards; automatic writing and automatic art; shamanic journeywork; self-hypnosis; trance states and attending seances, one must be spiritually protected and psychologically sound. Under the right circumstances, the kinds of fish that live in these deep psychic waters just might “turn the tables”, with you ending up as the one that’s in over your head (as with the above reader who is experiencing what she thinks is akin to negative entity interference). Before you make any effort to move out of ordinary waking consciousness and move your mental awareness into a meditative, psychic, or altered state, there are things you need to know about the process of altering your consciousness…and most of all, about yourself.

The Mysteries Within Altered States of Consciousness

No matter how clinical the mainstream wants to portray it, properly performed meditation is something of a spiritual mind trip—not just a physical alteration in brainwave patterns. What science does not recognize is that meditation can open a person’s perceptions to the unseen spiritual dimensions of life. This is new territory for the average person’s conscious, everyday, ego-mind to deal with and consequently, one can be hard-pressed to deal with these perceptions if unprepared.

During meditation, our day-to-day awareness moves away from waking, linear, and rational consciousness and moves into an altered, (shifted) and non-linear state that impinges upon our connection to a Greater Spiritual Reality. The very real things that cannot be seen, known, touched, heard, proven, or perceived by the ego mind and physical body can become accessible during meditation. When you meditate, you knock on the door of the Greater Reality, the Spiritual Unknown, where all things are possible and that is so utterly infinite…the identity that is you is not even a single grain of sand on all the beaches of endless existence.

Greater Reality contains the Spirit World where physical beings go when they pass over and it is also the place of the unborn. It is a place of altered time lines, this physical world and countless others, Souls, spiritual helpers, all information, ancestors, other universes, the collective unconscious, the subconscious, endless and unimaginable life forms, thought forms, unseen frequencies, non-human intelligence, powerful spiritual forces, other lifetimes, other dimensions…and that’s just for starters. The bottomless mysteries of Greater Reality are endless.

Whew! So, would you set out for the deepest reaches of the most remote jungle—all of you desk warriors, technology and grid dependent tender-feet —without getting trained and prepped for an expedition into the rawest of the wild?!

I think not. You would want to know the terrain and have a compelling purpose to go there. You would want hip waders to cross predatory waters, an assortment of survival instruments and first aid supplies, a guide, and oh, yes…a definite plan to get back “safe and sound” after your amazing adventure.

A mind trip into Greater Reality, via meditation, requires that you be likewise informed and prepared. So, here it is: what you must know before you go!

Six Secret Facts About Meditation and Altered States of Awareness.

1. Your beliefs and emotions will influence (and limit) your experience.

Your perceptions of what you see, hear, feel, seem to know, etc. while in an altered state of awareness, such as meditation, will primarily take shape according to your core beliefs and internal programming. A person with ingrained Christian teachings may perceive Jesus or yet another symbol, insight, or introspection that revolves around some aspect of Christian belief. Someone who has a different mindset—any particular mindset—will perceive something else. As one begins to expand the repertoire of his or her beliefs and begins to abandon belief for the pursuit of knowledge, the symbols, insight, and understanding that happen will also shift accordingly.

Your inner moods also influence the quality and type of the meditative experience, so don’t enter a deep alerted state or meditate when you are in a negative emotional state. (Light self-suggestive states, however, are helpful to overcome negative emotions.)

Must know: Your beliefs and mood do color and effect your reality, your perceptions, and your understanding. This means that what you see, feel, seem to know, etc. during an altered state of consciousness is most likely not an irrefutable fact…but a personal teaching specific to your stage of growth. As you grow, the more you will be able to know: what you think you know or what you think is happening is a temporary rung on an infinitely tall ladder. Spirit will do anything and everything to teach you not to be a slave to your own beliefs and to stretch you to grow by learning more about yourself.

2. All exploration is experimental.

Meditative experiences—as unlikely revelations of irrefutable truth for all the world to abide by but rather personal teachings that come within the framework of one’s understanding—should be taken as experiments in self-discovery. You may think you are learning the secrets of Life when in fact you are receiving snapshots of your own psyche and taking important baby steps in the process of personal development.

Must know: Keep an open mind. Above all, understand that there is much you will not understand and that’s just the way it is. Rejoice at bits and pieces of insight and put what you don’t understand on the shelf. You cannot explain everything because non-physical reality cannot be molded into a tidy conceptual box your physical brain will want to create. It’s all too big for you and the sooner you accept that, the more spiritual you will become.

3. Before you enter Greater Reality, your auric energy body must be protected.

Under no circumstance should you enter an altered state of consciousness without mentally building a protective light shield around your aura. (Repeat of same warning as above, one more time: drugs and alcohol are to be avoided. Protection exercises are largely nullified by substance use, not just “abuse”.) Your protection exercise has to be done with the specific intention to shut out any energies, entities, non-human intelligence and other influences that do not have Divine authority/Higher Self permission to interact with you. –And there are many unfit energies that would seek to have your audience.

Must know: Reality is directed and shaped through consciousness on some level of existence, including what you mentally focus on while in a physical body. What you mentally project—your visual and heartfelt intentions—becomes real in the spiritual dimensions. Strong visualization and personal projection of energetic protective boundaries, along with your heartfelt intention, creates a tangible defense to keep out energies that can harm or deceive you when your aura opens up in meditation and other altered states of awareness.

4. Your intentions must be very clear and appropriate.

Laziness and overconfidence is a sure way to get into trouble. If you think that “you” don’t need protection or that you can be vague in your protection exercise because you are somehow already so spiritual that “bad” things can’t bother you, you are in the company of many others who share your delusion. At the very least, you will stagnate and never grow while you think you are. Have a definite and appropriate purpose for entering into altered states. Develop mental clarity about your intentions for meditating before you do so.

Must know: If you can’t develop and maintain mental discipline enough to keep focus on your intention, best to skip meditating until you can. Again, have a firm purpose before you meditate.

5. You are responsible for what happens. Whatever happens is merely your teacher and a catalyst for your growth.

None of us are victims, but are participants in the unfolding of Consciousness, specifically our own Consciousness. For example, if one has a good/evil belief system and has tried to adopt a spiritual path without relinquishing certain superstitions, (a very common habit of “putting new wine into old bottles”) this mixed-belief concoction may expose one to unpleasant experiences while in an altered state of awareness. These experiences are merely teaching moments that show us what we have to clear up and let go of in order to grow spiritually. In other words, a true spiritual practice is hard work that will remold you while it demolishes beliefs that are not aligned with Universal truth.

Must know: If something unpleasant is happening and what you’re doing to alleviate it does not help, then it’s time to look deep within and do the inner work that’s indicated by the experience. It’s not up to Angels to spare you from your own inner issues, which are there for you to face, learn from, and overcome. Take responsibility for self-improvement while you make learning about yourself and your place in this existence a way of life.

6. Nothing in existence is truly static. Successful meditation creates change.

It is natural for average human beings to create comfort zones and want to stay there. We feel safe with all things familiar, even when the familiar happens to be a dark cave of despair. Most of us are afraid of change, in fact—we are afraid of just about everything. Most of all, we’re afraid to look inside of ourselves. We are deeply terrified of our own Shadow, which all of us have. And as long as we remain afraid of our Shadow and afraid of change, we will never fully find, or become, our Light.

Must Know: A successful, dedicated spiritual practice via altered states of consciousness, such as meditation, will create change within you—one way or the other. Your worldview will change drastically. Your perceptions may turn upside down as you begin to wake up from the dark dream of the human stage and see—for the first time—things in this world for what they really are. You will see yourself in a whole new perspective—for what you really are, shadow included. But what makes a shadow? Light, of course! So, instead of being powerless, you will discover the power within yourself. Where you were cowardly, you will learn courage. Where you were self-centered, you will want to serve others. Where you were egotistical, you will be humbled. Where you were weak, you will become strong. –And so on, for in all of the truth that you seek, the most important truth will be about yourself. That is the catalyst for genuine spiritual growth.

By all means, learn and practice meditation but do so wisely and with respect. What you sincerely seek, you will find. Deep inside, it is goodness that you long for. You seek goodness with all your heart, oh yes, you do! With meditation, you are enabled to climb out of your perceptual cave and go beyond the limitations you’ve built around yourself by laying bare the Universe inside of you. In this, it is a certainty that “Goodness you will find”.

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If this post has been of help and assistance to you, great! Diana offers these valuable insights from her heart and with the highest intentions to be of service to you and to all. She gives freely. Please consider completing the beautiful energy exchange with her by donating if you found this article helpful. Thank you.
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