This is a long newsletter. You can read the google doc or Substack for the full version. (If you’re reading the email version of this post, it will probably cut off the entire thing.)
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Everybody (including me) tells you to meditate.
Not many people tell you what happens once you start to rigorously meditate for decades.
This email is my attempt to share that with you in a raw and real way.
But first some context (to set the stage):
I started meditating consistently in 2011 (back in my University days). The meditation I started with was 20 minutes/day of the classic “focus on your breath” meditation (I did this for a few years). Since then, my practice evolved and I’ve done all different types of meditations.
From concentration meditations to Transcendental Meditation to joy meditations (i.e. jhanas) to heart based meditations to body scanning meditations to do nothing meditations to everything in between.
And my daily time spent meditating has been anywhere between 20 minutes/day (minimum) to upwards of a couple hours/day (depending on the season of life. The sweet spot I’ve personally found to be most sustainable is 2 30-minute sessions/day).
But in addition to this meditation time:
I’ve also worked/inquired with a Diamond Approach teacher every single week since Halloween Day of 2020.
(Probably missed < 10-20 weeks during that time span of 6 years)
And done ~18ish+ retreats.
So although that isn’t all ‘meditation’ time, it’s similar because you need to be in a meditative state to do that Work so I’m going to include ‘inquiry’/weekend retreat time (6-7 hours/daily) into this general bucket of meditation (a lot of the changes come directly from this time).
Now with that understood, let’s talk about what changed *and* what didn’t.
First the changes in random order (I’ll leave it to you to decide if these changes are positive or negative lol. For me, it’s been unbelievably positive, but that’s just my experience. You may feel otherwise):
I don’t really look forward to anything. When I was in University, I remember a friend saying: “The secret to happiness is to have something on your calendar that you can look forward to. Maybe a trip. Maybe a concert. Maybe a hot date. Whatever.” I remember hearing this and thinking: “This sounds true” because whenever I have something planned in the future that is fun and exciting, it allows me to feel good feelings leading up to the event. Almost as if it gave my days meaning. But then I started meditating and over time I noticed this all changed. No longer would I look forward to anything. For example: Earlier this year I punched into the calendar a 2 month trip to Japan/Vietnam that was going to be spent quite luxuriously. And leading up to it friends would ask: “Are you excited?” And I would just rattle off whatever they wanted to hear (for the sake of maintaining social convention) but my genuine internal answer was: “No. I don’t feel excited because it hasn’t happened yet so I haven’t given it a second thought.” (The excitement only came once I was actually in Japan. Not before… not even at the airport/on the flight).
Now on the surface: This may sound depressing. But from my experience, here’s what actually happened underneath the hood: When I used to look forward to things, I used to feel pretty bad in the here and now. So having something fun and exciting in the future allowed me to use it as a permission slip to feel better in the here and now. But after meditating for some time, I would just naturally start to feel good without needing any reason. This, in return, killed the need to have something to look forward to. In other words: The only person that looks forward to heaven is the one who is currently in hell. If you’re already in heaven, you don’t look forward to heaven. This also applies in the opposite direction. Let’s say I have something on the calendar that I don’t really want to do, but need to do. Maybe a difficult conversation. Maybe closing a big work deal. Maybe something scary and daunting. Previously if I had this scheduled for lets say Thursday and it was Monday, it would lowkey ruin my whole week because I would be constantly thinking about it while working, in the shower, on walks, and stressing out. Now? It doesn’t even arise in my awareness until it actually happens. And when it does actually happen, it’s usually 100x different than what my mind would’ve painted it to be. So getting all that time/energy/productivity back is amazing.
It doesn’t really matter what I’m doing, I can experience the inner spring of wellbeing regardless of task. Before meditation, I would feel really good when I was doing fun things: Travelling, playing sports, having sex, partying, talking to pretty girls, eating a juicy steak, hanging out with friends, whatever. And pretty bad/dull when I was doing boring things: Cleaning, doing taxes, responding to work emails, going grocery shopping, random chores, getting my driver license renewed, whatever. After meditation, I started to feel a baseline level of goodness independent of task. This isn’t as extreme as saying having sex and doing your taxes are one and the same now lol (fuck taxes), but the boring tasks aren’t really dull/boring anymore. A sense of lightness/goodness/bliss pervades the task and this makes the task feel good/fulfilling. This kills procrastination and is also helpful because running a business involves doing a lot of dull and boring tasks.
My short term memory is absolutely cooked, but I can typically access information when/if I need it. I remember telling my Diamond Approach teacher: “I think I’m becoming stupider.” She said: “Why do you think that?” I said “normally my mind is running a mile a minute and constantly tinkering/tweaking/running scenarios/formulas in the background. But now? It has drastically slooooooooooooooowed down and just feels more empty and spacious (I was projecting onto the quality of spaciousness a feeling of ‘stupidity’ which isn’t accurate). Also, I don’t really feel like I have a strong memory anymore. In University, I could quickly and easily memorize anything and everything and retain it long enough to projectile vomit onto exams to score A+s. Now? I’m hard pressed to remember what I did just an hour or two ago.” She replied by saying: “This doesn’t mean you’re becoming stupider, it just means the mind doesn’t need to hold onto memories to define yourself. Instead, it can experience more of the higher states of mind which are characterized by spaciousness and emptiness.” I didn’t understand that at the time, but now I’m starting to. My mind has become more of a receiver than a generator. When I need to remember something, it magically arises. When I don’t need to remember something, it magically disappears. This also applies to work. I can simply direct my mind in that direction and then all sorts of ideas, insights, solutions will start to arise. This is how I tend to do my best thinking now. I don’t really know how this works, but it works.
People go out of their way to do favors for you (including things that on the surface seem to go against their natural self interest/make no sense). This one is interesting, but for whatever reason I experience a lot of good fortune/favors (usually without me asking for anything). Some “interesting” examples: I go to an event and there’s a line around the block. I walk up to the bouncer (I don’t know him) and for whatever reason he feels the need to help me cut the line (without asking for $$$s. Although I’ll pay him afterwards on my way out). A guy comes to set up the internet at my new house and company policy is to charge $x for each booster to place around your house, but for whatever reason he sets up boosters all over the house for free. A cleaning crew comes to clean my house and spends hours upon hours (more than the allocated time) cleaning and then doesn’t even ask for payment (I literally had to hunt them down and annoy them to pay them). An authorized dealer (AD) selling a highly sought after Rolex that apparently has a 3-5+ year “waitlist” decides to “sell it to me” pretty much immediately upon meeting for the first time (I was under the impression you cannot just walk in/get Rolexes and just walked in for shits and giggles because I had like 20 minutes to kill before a meeting). A jeweller that I bought a tennis bracelet for my girl from somehow misquotes the price because “something came over him” (his words, not mine) and knocks it off by a hefty percentage and then happily honors the deal because a “deal is a deal”. The examples are endless and usually don’t involve money, but just sharing those to give you a small flavor of weird things that happen. I don’t know why this happens (I have theories), but it’s been pretty cool to experience. My running theory on this is: My nature is your nature. The more I’m in touch with this nature and the less Tej aka the character is present, the more people unconsciously feel drawn towards helping/supporting/being around this nature (because it’s unconsciously reminding them of their true home/power). So this naturally leads to them wanting to do things that serve this nature (even if it means going against their character’s interests). But again, that’s just a running theory. I don’t analyze this.
People tell you their secrets. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known somebody. You could be at a dinner seated next to people you don’t know. And it’s likely the person next to you will be talking to you and say: “I don’t usually tell this to people or I don’t know why I’m telling you this… but… [fill in some secret]”. This happens a lot.
And I think I know why. The more judgment people sense in a space, the more contracted/closed off they become. The more openness/compassion they sense in space, the more expanded/truthful they become. Vibing out in the open ocean of compassion seems to invite people to undress themselves verbally. This is great for creating deeper relationships/friendships.
Worth mentioning: It’s obviously important to not violate this trust because usually after somebody derobes their soul… they can feel a little awkward/uncomfortable as they stand before you more naked than they’re used to feeling, so it’s important for you to remain open and compassionate so they can feel into how they have nothing to worry about/you don’t care about their secrets/you care about them. This is easy to do because it’s genuinely the truth of my experience now.
I feel less “reactions”, more qualities of being. If your consciousness is open to the dynamism of Reality and free from internal blocks, then Presence manifests whatever quality of being is needed to serve the needs of the moment. If a friend is in pain (or you’re experiencing difficulty), then the green healing energy of compassion will arise. If somebody is attacking you, then the firey red flames of strength will arise. If you’re running a free flowing podcast, then the bright yellow joy of discovery will arise. If you’re embarking on a new endeavor, then the white mountain of will will arise. This sounds like it’s straight out of a SciFi movie, but it’s been more or less my experience. I still have a lot of blocks that prevent these qualities from fully arising in my experience as needed, but they’re arising more and more frequently. Contrast this with my former experience: Instead of experiencing qualities of being to assist me in the pursuit of living a full inner and outer life, I would experience “reactions” of the personality such as anxiety, withdrawal, isolation, anger, frustration, sadness, dullness, etc. All these reactions were pointing to my disconnection from the qualities of being, but of course I didn’t see this until it came time to see this (i.e. if you’re disconnected from the ground of will, then the unconscious reaction you’ll experience is anxiety. If you’re disconnected from your sense of agency/strength, then the unconscious reaction you’ll feel is anger/frustration. If you’re disconnected from the lightness of being, then the unconscious reaction you’ll feel is depression/sadness/heaviness/dullness. There’s a science to all this. Of course you’ll think all these reactions are arising because of xyz happening in your life and that may be part of it, but really there’s arising because of your disconnection from the ground of being.)
I can guide people into feeling more freedom/expanded states of being (without trying). It just seems to happen more and more often. Not because I have any special abilities, but because Presence itself is the holy grail and it’s contagious. So if I’m in touch with Presence and I’m talking to somebody (especially strangers/acquaintances/friends… harder to do with family members lol), then they’ll usually start to feel bolder, freer, and expanded. Or if not, I can typically ask questions that help people to feel into what they otherwise weren’t feeling into and this opens the door to the inner spring of wellbeing.
Going off this last point…
People want to talk to you (a lot). I don’t normally buy things from Facebook Marketplace, but one day I was in a different neck of the woods and volunteered to pick something up for a loved one. My loved one texted me the meet up spot and I pulled up to meet the person. 3 hours later I returned to my car and had a phone full of missed calls/anxious texts from my loved one expressing concern: “Omg are you okay????” the texts read. “Yeah, why?” I replied. “Your phone’s location was still showing the address to the meet up place and hadn’t updated for 3 hours and you weren’t replying to any of my texts/calls!!” “My bad. I was just standing outside and talking to the guy I was picking up x from.” “You know normally people just pick up and go, right? They don’t spend 3 hours talking to the guy from Facebook marketplace haha.” “Haha yeh, I guess.”
But this is more or less what happens now. I go to pick up a suit from my tailor. It should take 2 minutes. It takes 2 hours. I go to get a haircut in a foreign town. It should take 30 minutes. It takes 3 hours. I go to hit a walk with somebody from tweeter (that I’ve never met before). It should take 60 minutes. It takes 6 hours.
All these examples may seem extreme, but the thing is it doesn’t really feel like 2 or 3 or 6 hours. It literally feels like you leave the world of time, hang out in the eternal space of the here and now, and only when you return do you notice how much clock time has passed. This is an area where I probably have to uphold stronger boundaries because my schedule usually goes off the rails. But whatever. I’ve let it ride for now.
(Also worth noting I wouldn’t classify myself as an extrovert. Probably more of an ambivert (but F labels) and if it was up to me… I’d be fine just chilling by myself most days. Just mentioning that because the above has been quite radical compared to how things used to be previously).
Suffering decreased by ~75%. You don’t (or at least I didn’t) realize how much you’re suffering until the suffering starts to drastically decrease. Then it literally feels like: “Wtf?! Is this how good life could’ve always felt? Ah, how much time I’ve wasted!” But such is how it tends to go. The suffering also doesn’t decrease by doing things, but by not doing. In other words: Majority of the inner actions the personality takes such as having goals, judging/commenting on the events of life, rejecting, pushing, pulling, resisting, running creates a looooooooot of suffering. By meditating (especially do nothing meditation), you learn to not touch or interfere with your experience as much. This allows it to simply unfold and decreases the suffering. Also letting go of all the gunk stored in your unconsciousness seems to restore the life in your eyes and renders everything around you to be perceived with at least 10-20% more brightness/illumination. And things just become infinitely more simpler and easier (hence my belief: “everything is easy!”)
It’s incredibly easy to win friends and influence people (because you no longer care to win friends and influence people). When I was a teenager, I read the book how to win friends and influence people. Then I summarized the contents and would review my highlights daily while I spent my time and energy trying to win friends and influence people. The result of this? I didn’t win friends… or influence people lol. Instead, I just repelled people because it felt like I had an agenda (which I did… the agenda was to win friends and influence people lmao). But then I started meditating and noticed the less my character was running the show, the easier it was to win friends and influence people. It would happen by default. And the underlying mechanism IMO is: You can either be on your character’s side or on the side of truth. If you’re on your character’s side, you repel people. If you’re on team truth, you may do and say things that go against your own character’s interests. This, in return, leads to people trusting you by default and raises your ability to influence and persuade. Of course the kicker in all this is you stop giving 2 fucks about winning friends and influencing people. You realize the quest to do that was really motivated by the inner longing to fill the hole of connection. Once you experience presence and start to rest your identity there, you experience that connection you longed for 1000x over. And no longer need to win friends. Or influence people. (Which again… leads to you winning friends and influencing people lol).
My life has become simple and boring from the outside, but incredibly rich and adventurous on the inside. On the outside, I do what everybody does. I wake, eat, type on my laptop, run calls, walk, workout, socialize, read, sleep. Each day follows more or less the same loop. But on the inside, I feel like an astronaut that’s shooting off into outer space and experiencing the fullness of the Universe by tasting it directly. What will today’s exploration bring? I have no idea!! But I’m on the edge of my seat and dying to find out! (This usually leads to me having more or just as much fun sitting on my couch at 8pm as I would bar hopping in Tokyo at 11pm.)
I can feel my feelings now. The secret to healing that nobody wants to follow (myself included) is to feel the feelings you don’t want to feel. Do this and the healing happens (you can reverse a lot of issues). Personally speaking: I spent the majority of my adolescence/adult years cut off from my body. The mind was all I knew. Then I started meditating and the heart started to open. At first (for about 2 years), I would respond to this by literally thinking: “Wtf is that?” It felt weird and foreign to be able to feel things. Usually when people asked me how do you feel about x? I would respond with a thought: “I think it’s good.” lol. By opening up to the heart, however, I started to make contact with my feelings again. This was quite painful in the beginning because all the painful feelings that I didn’t want to feel started to come into the light of awareness to be felt (these painful feelings was why I originally disconnected from the heart and sent it underground). But overtime (after a couple years of feeling like shit), the heart started to return to more of its natural light and dynamic and free essence. Now it feels really good. Almost like how I used to feel as a child. But about 2-3x better.
My orientation has changed from: “chase pleasure, avoid pain” to: “love truth for its own sake”. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure (it’s great!). There’s nothing wrong about wanting to not feel pain (who would?). But the problem with chasing pleasure and avoiding pain is it keeps our familiar self image intact and prevents our being from growing in consciousness. This is the case because: What feels pleasurable is what soothes your familiar self. What feels painful is what threatens your familiar sense. On this journey, you’re really working to untangle your consciousness from the grip of the familiar identity that is giving rise to viewpoints and distortions that create endless suffering/limitations in how you play the video game of life. So if you’re constantly choosing pleasure and avoiding pain, you’re maintaining the bars to your prison cell. With that in mind, it makes sense that you would need to adopt a different orientation if freedom in all forms is truly your goal. The most powerful orientation I’ve found? To love truth for its own sake. If you cultivate a love for truth (regardless of whether it feels pleasurable or painful), then the truth will quite literally start to cook you and put your growth and development on steroids.
I have gained tremendous amounts of freedom from the superego. Prior to meditation, I would walk on egg shells around people because I didn’t want to “upset” them. I would swallow my authentic desires because I was scared of what people would say. I would color inside the lines so I could be a good little boy. I would pretend to not give a fuck so people would like me. I would post screenshots of how much money I was making to prove to people that I was valuable. All these examples shine light on how I was living to please the superego (whether mine or somebody else’s). Nowadays? I don’t live my life for the superego. I live my life for mySelf. I travel the world and don’t tell anybody. I run up the numbers and don’t tell anybody. I serve the world and don’t tell anybody. When the superego arises and tries to control my experience by putting me back in the familiar box of suffering, I tell it to fuck off. This, in return, creates separation between me and it and renders its tactics and strategies obsolete.
I can feel more deeply now, but not be “stained” by what I feel. This one is related to being able to feel my feelings (again). But albeit it’s a slightly different point because I cannot just feel my feelings now. I feel those feelings quite deeply. When my two cousins unexpectedly died this year, for example, my sorrow and grief felt bottomless. Oceans full of tears would arise. And wash over me. “Holy fuck, I haven’t ever felt grief like this!” I would think. But then something funny would happen. The intense feelings would wash away just as rapidly and I’d remain unstained. This doesn’t just apply to grief. But whatever I’m feeling. Contrast this with how it felt prior to meditation: I wouldn’t feel feelings, I would identify with feelings. If anxiety was in my experience, I wouldn’t feel it. I would unconsciously identify with the anxiety and take on the role of being an anxious person. If fear was in my experience, I wouldn’t feel it. I would unconsciously identify with the fear and take on the role of being a scared person. If aggression was in my experience, I wouldn’t feel it. I would unconsciously identify with the aggression and take on the role of being passive aggressive or whatever. Nowadays? That doesn’t happen as much. Rage, fear, anger, anxiety, grief can arise and I’ll feel it deeply. But then it’ll vanish. And I’ll remain free.
I can sense another person’s unconsciousness. I didn’t expect this to happen, but it happened. And it makes sense when you think about it. When you do this work, what you’re essentially doing is making the unconscious conscious. At first, this appears only like you’re just making your own unconscious conscious. And you are. But over time you realize there’s really no line that separates your unconscious from the unconscious of humanity itself (because you are it). So by opening up to your unconscious, you quite literally open up to the unconscious of everybody around you. Practically speaking, what this looks like is you can be talking with somebody and they can be telling you how happy they are (which may be true on the conscious level), but at the same time you may sense the deep levels of despair, sadness, grief they’re carrying in their unconscious. This is a bit jarring to experience at first because it quite literally feels like you have access to more data/information/new dimension in your every day experience. But you learn to use it for good. For example, you can be doing a sales call and the person can be consciously nodding their head and going along with everything you’re saying, but unconsciously you can feel their resistance and reluctance. Prior to meditation, you would just take what they say at face value and send the proposal/invoice and then wonder why they didn’t close? Now you can actually navigate the call to address the contents of their unconscious and hopefully clear it which may (doesn’t always) lead to them actually closing (if it’s right for them). Or (a better example) you can help break somebody from an unconscious prison they didn’t know they were in. This is very fulfilling. Although I’ll only do it if asked because I have 0 right to interfere with your experience.
I experienced a looooooong and painful dark night of the soul. Reality is not an illusion, but my subjective experience of reality was definitely an illusion. “It feels like I just woke up from a really long dream.” I told my teacher. “How does it feel to wake up?” she asked. “Kind of sad, the dream I took to be my life seemed so real, but it actually wasn’t. This lowkey stings. Quite badly.” Not only that, but the familiar world unravels and the new world hasn’t quite reached the boarding gates yet. So you’re kind of just waiting to board, stuck in limbo at an airport with no luggage (cannot take much with you besides who and what you are… all other attachments seem to fall away) and nobody around you. The old strategies and tactics you used to manipulate life no longer work (you’ve seen through em). But the new ways of being still feel awkward and jarring. This leaves you in no man’s land for quite some time. I spent like 3 ish years in this phase. And quite frankly: it fucking sucked. And at times, I wished I could just put the genie back in the bottle and contract my awareness and go back to sleep again. It felt easier and I envied the people who didn’t know a thing about spirituality. But I couldn’t. I had already reached escape velocity. The only thing left to do now was to make it through (or I would suffer endlessly). I made it through. And then everything improved bigly.
I opened the door to creativity. When I first started meditating, I would sit down and focus on the stillness/nothingness. After a while, things would start to arise spontaneously in this field of nothingness. What would arise would be based on whatever was going on in my life at the time. If I was working on writing a long form sales letter, the big idea I could use for the promotion would arise. If I was struggling to make a decision, the answer would arise. If I was working on a problem, the solution would reveal itself. This happened over and over again. And when I would apply the idea/answer/solution, magic would unfold in my life. I would make more money. Life would get easier. It felt like I had the midas touch. This, in return, really drew me towards meditation and developed a deep love affair with the practice. (In hindsight, reality probably manifested in this way so I would get attracted to meditation and keep going.)
I extended my ‘time spent in flow’ from 2-4 hours to 12-16 hours. Prior to meditation, flow state was a foreign land that I would visit for about 2-4 hours a day. After meditation, flow state became my home that I could stay in for the entirety of the waking day. How did this happen? To be in flow is to be in touch with the unfolding nature of reality on a moment by moment basis aka to surf the waves of what’s happening now. Flow state doesn’t come and go. You (I) come and go. Through meditation, you learn to bring your attention back into the here and now and rest there. This is the safest place to be and it puts you back in touch with the flow that is already here. Personal example from last week: I worked 6am till 12pm. Then I had to get this new house in order and lost myself in the task completely until about 6pm. Pure flow even when I’m doing things that my personality doesn’t like (like getting my house in order).
Side note: This also makes it easier to raw dog flights.
I have become extremely sensitive to some things (i.e. caffeine), but experienced a drastic reduction in sensitivity to other things (i.e. light at the shopping mall). Prior to meditation, I couldn’t really sense the effects of things. I would drink a coffee and feel a bit more alert, but not really know it. I would buy a supplement recommended on tweeter and not really know if it was working. I would go to a winery and touch my tastebuds with a sip of overpriced wine and not really taste the difference (ok I still cannot tell the difference). I would drive around with loud music playing and not really hear it. But after meditation, I started to become more sensitive to the effects of things. For example a cup of coffee on an empty stomach now sends me on a downward spiral. Or a supplement like Mag Glycine or creatine or L-theanine or Taurine or Lions Mane or Shilajit or NAC is truly experienced for its effects (this has resulted in being able to greatly lower my dosage. Less is more). But on the flip side, I’ve also noticed that my sensitivity to other things has decreased. One example is prior to rigorous meditation, I would go to the mall or a store and the bright white lights would literally make me feel dizzy and like I was about to faint. It was pretty bad. So I would just order everything online. And rarely go to the mall or whatever unless I had to. After a while of meditating, this disappeared by itself. I still hate the bright white lights, but I don’t glitch out anymore. Or feel like I’m about to faint. I feel my default normal state which is light and carefree. Another sensitivity that has disappeared completely is feeling claustrophobic on elevators/driving. Think this is because meditation leads to the sensation of inner spaciousness, so now you don’t really get claustrophobic.
My body broke free from the control of my mind & tends to do whatever it needs to do to process/clear things. This has been pleasant and unpleasant. Example of the pleasant: Tension patterns in the body that I’ve had for years (like unconsciously raising my shoulders to my ears) have unravelled. Example of the unpleasant: Uncontrollable shaking that can get activated at any moment. This has died down now but it was lowkey embarrassing in social situations because it would literally look like I have essential tremor at the very least or Parkinson’s on the extreme end. But it was just the stuck energy of yesterday clearing. And if I could simply ride it out without judging or resisting, then it would lead to me feeling quite more expanded and free afterwards. Although it sucked to experience. Lasted intensely for about a year and a half.
I have become more at ease with the dying process. Every time I’m deeply identified with a part of my psyche and take it to be who and what I am… the last thing I want to do is let go. It feels like death. And to that familiar identity/structure, it is death. But every now and then, I muster up the courage to let go anyways. And then something interesting happens. I go from experiencing extreme contraction to extreme expansion. And, this in return, is what it feels like to engage the dying process (while living). You die so many times on this journey (a thousand and one deaths) that you become almost comfortable with it. I wonder how this will play out when my physical body is actually dying? I don’t know, but I assume it’ll be helpful. The reason I think that is because I had a NDE a couple years ago where my brother and I almost drowned to our deaths. It was intense and the water was pretty much swallowing me whole, but I made one last ditch effort to make ‘contact’ with something I could hold onto at the nth hour. Literally if my hand came up empty, I would drown and die. It was that close. But somehow I made contact and eventually got rescued. Even better… my brother did the same. This would’ve been quite the traumatic experience that would’ve probably scarred me for life, but it was pretty chill. We got rescued, came back to the safety of dry land, and immediately cracked a joke: I don’t know about you, but I need a fucking beer. And then drank an ice cold beer and forgot all about it. But as it was happening, my body was glitching out to the absolute extreme (all the fire alarms internally were activated in a desperate attempt to save my life), but internally I was experiencing great peace. And had pretty much accepted that I was dying. And it was okay. I had some fears and worries like fuck my mom told us not to do this, but overall it was what it was and I was fine. Regardless of the outcome (I still wanted to live obviously, but you know). I saved my life that day, but I lost my glasses. Lol. I guess a small price to pay for being an idiiiiiiot.
My expression has become more poetic. Prior to meditation: I could give two Fs about poetry or anything related to that. Reason being: My heart was closed. But as the heart opens through meditation, your expression naturally becomes more poetic and you can articulate things much much much better. Language now acts as the tool you use to paint a picture of your inner world and it becomes more precise and dynamic. People usually pick up on this and make comments related to how articulate you are. But it doesn’t really feel like that to you. Your words are simply just transcribing what your heart is sensing.
Tasks complete themselves. I’m on a roadtrip. Driving for hours. After 3 or 4 hours into the drive, a friend asks: “Want me to drive now?” The question breaks me out of the immediacy and I check into my experience and say “No” because it doesn’t really feel like I’ve been driving for 3 or 4 hours. It just feels like driving has been happening. (Pre meditation: I would feel like I’m the one driving the car and get really tired (tiredness would come from maintaining the illusionary identity of being the one who is driving the car as much as it would come from physically driving). Couple years into meditation: I would feel like driving is happening, but I am the passenger that is being taken along for the ride. Now: There is no passenger. There is only driving). This example extends to pretty much everything, but in certain areas I still feel myself to be the one doing things (i.e. in business/work related tasks).
Alrightttttt… I could keep going and list off more and more benefits I’ve experienced in every domain of life… that are very radical… such as sensing and feeling the Presence of God… developing extra sensory perception (at times)…. or even just becoming more functional/high agency in life/business… but this newsletter is already shaping up to clock 6k+ words and I want to give your eyes a break from the screen. So let me just conclude this section by saying:
Meditation gave me pretty much everything I ever wanted (and then some).
I cannot even compare how I am now with how I used to be.
It’s two completely different universes.
But as great as that sounds, now let’s move onto the things that didn’t change (yet):
I still swear. I stopped trying to change my behavior years ago. I realized it just causes more friction and suffering. Instead, I just become aware of certain patterns and work to understand what’s happening. When/if I do, things naturally tend to change themselves. Or stick around. Swearing is a good example of something that has stuck around. I would’ve assumed that once I felt more into the purity of my nature, then the cussing would maybe stop on its own. Turns out? It hasn’t. I still swear. Maybe not as much as before. But enough. And between me and you, it still feels fucking good.
I still drink alcohol. I used to go on benders. I still do. But I used to too (Mitch Hedberg voice) haha. But this has decreased by like 90%. When I drink now, I feel my state decreasing rather than increasing. Yet I still drink on occasion. I don’t know why, probably more to explore here.
I still get triggered & caught in the world of lies. I can be feeling open, expanded, free, liberated, and in touch with presence one moment. Then something can happen and in the next moment I’m instantly teleported to feeling small, deficient, hurt, sad, and stuck playing out the same old role in a black and white movie. The only difference now is I can usually sense when this happens… feel my body, crack a smile and shatter the world of lies instantly or in 30ish minutes max. Good example of this: I got into an argument with my girl the other week and I could feel myself playing into the combative role of wanting to be right/prove my point/show her my way is the right way. Then I walked to the kitchen to get some water (don’t you hate when you get thirsty mid argument?) and endless laughter just came over me. Then I returned to the room and started laughing and she started laughing too. Fights in the world of lies are temporary, but laughter is forever ;-D
I still experience ‘negative’ emotions. Anxiety, fear, doubt, sadness, anger, frustration, murderous rage come and go as normal. But I have access to so much more simultaneously. More peace, joy, support, compassion, will. This allows you to better perceive and handle the negative emotions. They’re not something to fight or resist because fundamentally they’re not bigger than you, you’re bigger than then.
I still have difficulty in certain relationships. Certain relationships have a painful history attached to them. In these conversations, I can feel myself regressing in real time and losing presence and aligning back with my familiar self images or superego judgments. I think this will change in the future, but for now… relationships as a whole have improved bigly, but there’s a few that still suck.
I still have to clean my room (welp). I thought if I meditated long and hard enough then Jordan Peterson would magically arise and clean my room for me. But he hasn’t shown up yet?!?!? Lol lame jokes aside… the room that is my life doesn’t magically clean itself. I mean, it kind of does because things tend to sort themselves out when I don’t interfere with my unfoldment (and unfold the highest possible reality). But I still need to expend some type of effort to embody and actualize the qualities of being that I’ve made contact with through meditation (and not go along with the familiar ways). Maybe this will change in the future? I don’t know.
But that’s the quick and dirty run down of what has remained the same.
With that understood, the question now becomes:
Is meditation right for you?
And the answer I want to shout from the top of the roof is:
“YUH. OBVIOUSLY. DUH. YOU’D BE STUPID NOT TO DO IT.”
But the more honest answer is probably:
“I don’t know. It depends.”
Why is this the more honest answer?
Because meditation isn’t really what everybody tells you it is.
When they first sell it to you, they say:
“Hey you! Do you want to make better decisions, be more creative, get more calm & learn how to relax? Then meditate!!!!!”
And it sounds good, so you think:
“You know what, I really should make more time for meditation.”
But here’s the thing:
Although meditation will likely unlock those things (and a lot more), that’s not really the point of meditation (those things are byproducts).
The point of meditation is to deconstruct your identification with what is false and align it with what is true. It’s a spiritual practice that is extremely radical in its approach and not really this warm and fuzzy and passive thing it’s made out to be. In many ways it’s quite intense and functions like a flame that will burn yourself and your familiar world to the ground (in due time).
Most people start meditating, but don’t realize this. And then they scream out in pain when the fire starts to burn. And think they’ve gone the wrong way and are experiencing the “ill effects” of meditation and may conclude:
“Meditation doesn’t work for me.”
But this isn’t a bug, my friend.
This is the entire feature of meditation. Its purpose, you see, is not to enhance your current life. But to burn it to the ground, so your real life may arise and unfold and prosper.
IMO:
This is the most important thing you can do because otherwise you’re not really living, but acting out a mechanical existence.
But what the F do I know?
I’m just a guy writing to himself on the internet.
You know best and may think otherwise!
So I leave it up to you to decide :-)
Your friend who was slipping in and out of meditation while writing this,
/tej