Meditation, Mystical Experiences and Your Progress on The Path

Can you imagine a mountain climber’s sense of accomplishment if they can summit Mount Everest? They train for years before attempting the journey, ensuring they are physically and mentally strong and usually having a professional guide accompany them. It’s an adventure similar to meditation, but our guide, in this case, is not a sherpa but a Guru. Sitting down motionless and not thinking about anything might sound easy on the surface, yet physical and mental hurdles on this path certainly arise. Just like you’d prepare to climb a mountain, you must prepare for your attempt at spiritual ascension, regardless of the route.

It’s normal during such strenuous journeys to question whether you are fit for it and if you can make it to the end goal. There’s always that negative voice in your mind, ready to remind you of your weaknesses and past transgressions. Please ignore it and keep moving. Following Swamiji over the years, I’ve seen many seekers express this anxiety in one way or another. Through Swaminar questions, comments on YouTube videos, or here on os.me. Some question if they can genuinely sit in meditation for extended periods because they have body pain or their legs fall asleep. Others question the speed at which they progress, and some question if they are worthy of divine grace. Some are starting to have experiences such as tingling sensations and want to know if that is a good sign and if it is normal.

I have asked myself all these questions and more as well. Of all the questions you can pose, there are two critical questions that any seeker will have to ask themselves at some point:
How happy are you with the following aspects of your spiritual progress?
1) My efforts on the path*
2) My progress on the path*

*These questions are not of my own creation, but come from Swamiji.

If I answered these questions honestly, I’d give myself a six out of ten for my efforts and perhaps a four for my progress. One thing these two questions highlight is our expectations on the path. Did we expect it to be easy? Then, despite some potential shortfall in our efforts, we may think we are doing all it should take to succeed and thus rate ourselves highly on our efforts. Yet the results are not coming in as we’d envisioned, so we score our progress a disappointing 1 or 2. Perhaps aligning these scores more closely is one of the keys to spiritual progress. In any case, reconciling the difference in our scores is paramount.

Despite questioning the path many (countless) times, I have this deep sense of faith that spiritual practice never goes to waste and will take us somewhere new. The purpose of this post is to reach out to anyone else struggling along the path. It can be lonely at times, so I thought I’d share a bit of my struggle so that others can understand and reflect on their journey simultaneously.

Starting a meditation practice, similar to how we begin a long hike, you start fresh, excited for the trip with a spring in your step. You keep your head down and enjoy your time outdoors. After some time, you feel fatigued, so you stop to take a break. You are eager to lift your eyes and gaze at your mountainous goal. Because you think with all the effort you’ve put in so far, the mountain will appear much closer as your goal must be nearer. You are transfixed and disappointed that the mountain still seems as distant as it ever was. It’s as though you haven’t even taken a step. It’s a demoralizing feeling and can make you want to give up right then and there and descend to base camp for a nice hot meal.

Many times with my meditation practice, I felt I was not progressing as I should be. So recently, I decided to take a keen look at my past to see if I could identify any internal changes that had occurred since I started meditating. Despite not having reached any ultimate goal of mediation, I immediately recognized a significant difference in my mental health. I used to fall prey to what Swamiji called “tearing thoughts .” These thoughts can derail you at any point in time and can wreck not just your day but those around you as well. You could be having a great day, and something will trigger a particular train of thoughts in your consciousness out of the blue, and then boom! You become lost in a sea of negativity. Sometimes these episodes would last for a week, and I could never tell when they would strike. Looking back over the last couple of years, I was shocked to realize that this has not occurred even one single time over that period. This is no small achievement either. It took me over a decade of psychotherapy to identify why I was vulnerable to these tearing thoughts. That didn’t stop them from happening, but it allowed me to manage them better and lessen their length and severity. It turned out to be my spiritual practices that stopped them altogether, and I’m very grateful for that.

So if you are struggling on the path and wondering if it’s worth the effort you put in, I’d encourage you to take your eyes off your ultimate goal for a moment and cast a glance behind you to see how far you’ve come. You might be amazed at the distance you have traveled. Maybe you have crossed rivers, ravines, and covered miles of open ground to stand where you are now. You will see how perhaps you used to be more selfish, ungrateful, or full of anger and self-loathing. Mindfulness, meditation, sadhana, faith, and devotion were the keys that unlocked this stage for me. And it wasn’t like I consciously worked on changing this mental pattern; it just happened. That’s because developing positive qualities or curbing your negative tendencies leads to the same place; purification – the purpose of spiritual practice.

I encourage you to keep your goal in mind and give yourself credit for the distance you have already traveled by seeing how much you’ve changed since starting your consistent spiritual practice. Remember, it’s not just any mountain you are trying to climb, but Everest itself. The process is often not enjoyable. Expect it to be grueling, tedious, boring at times, tiring physically and mentally, and the most challenging endeavor you have ever undertaken. However, understanding what we’ve signed up for and prioritizing it will speed up the process.

Om Swami wrote: “If you are prepared to strive for depth and toil hard for it, you will come back to the surface with your hands full of pearls.”

Babaji said something similar: “one who depends on fate or destiny and doesn’t make an effort remains sitting – like the one who sits by the seashore waiting for a pearl to wash up.”

Besides my improved overall well-being and mental health, I have also had a few powerful mystical experiences through meditation. These details are not relevant, but I mention them here because, as an individual meditator, they are essential signposts for me and help keep me motivated. I cannot recreate these experiences yet, but they gave me glimpses of the truth, which my mind now yearns to experience again. That yearning helps in keeping the motivation high.

How do we know if we are ready to start this journey? Well, everyone’s world is like a circus created by their mind. There are many entertainers: the strong man, the clown, the animal trainer, trapeze artists, and more. When our thoughts flow outward and into the world, also known as pravritti, we see and experience these different acts. Sometimes they are pleasing, sometimes not. The circus continues until one realizes it is time to pack the chaos up. Thus starts the process of turning inward or nivritti. Swamiji discussed spiritual awakening and mentioned that this process might begin as a subtle feeling of something missing in your life. This feeling may dawn even if you have a comfortable financial and happy family life. The process of turning inward is not easy, though. Just because you know what the problem is and how to address it does not solve the problem. It takes patience, lots of patience, to turn inward. Swamiji pointed out a funny puzzle: infinite patience can give instant results. On the other hand, if you want results from your actions immediately, you will experience all kinds of hurdles. So, instead of cursing at the rain, please grab an umbrella.

Eventually, your path will invoke that energy within you that will help you decimate, circumvent, cross over, move around, ignore or otherwise win victory over any hurdle in your path.

I wish everyone good luck and Godspeed on your chosen path!