meditation - some areas of effect and precautions

MENTAL

• Move from a state of unconscious reactivity to conscious choice
• Perform a "soft reset" of mental activity
• Allow information to process and integrate
• Let the mind rest and rejuvenate
• Notice compulsive and repetitive thought patterns
• See and challenge habitual thoughts and unconscious beliefs
• Increase mental alertness and ability to focus
• Increase capacity to be present
• Increase awareness of the effects that external stimuli and media have on mental state

EMOTIONAL

• Create space for unprocessed emotions to flow and release
• Witness emotions, allowing an opportunity to understand and learn from them
• Make room for unintegrated traumas and fears to rise up and be processed with current level of awareness
• Learn to be with emotions without reacting or projecting
• Gain more compassion and understanding towards self and others
• Allow space for underlying peace and contentment to arise
• Increase awareness of how consumption of content, media, food, substances etc affects emotional state
• Increase awareness of how others, environments and situations affect emotional state

SPIRITUAL

• Reconnect with essential nature underneath fluctuations of body, sensation, thought and feeling
• Merge with underlying universal essence
• Experience the simplicity of deeper nature, the pure outflowing of awareness
• Recognize that which has been identified with
• Feel that which has been previously sought through external ambitions and goals
• Know oneself underneath actions, words and behaviours
• Disidentify from patterned behaviour, increasing self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others
• Deepen sensitivity of intuition
• Develop trust beyond reasoning faculties
• Experience timelessness

PHYSICAL

• Deepen awareness of sensations and fluctuations in the body
• Heighten ability to sense and correct dis-ease in the body
• Increase awareness of when the body needs rest and activity
• Hone the capacity to listen attentively to others
• Allow the body to move from perpetual hyperarousal to a state of rest
• Give the body's natural healing faculties time to engage and work
• Increase awareness of how consumption impacts the body on increasingly subtle levels

PRECAUTIONS

Like yoga, meditation can end up being more intense than you might expect. You never know what might come up; there could be a moment when you unblock and suddenly have to process a lot of buried trauma and pain so it's helpful to be prepared for the possibility of this beforehand. You could experience anything from persistent unease for days to weeks to months, to panic attacks while sitting. Both are ultimately temporary but it can interrupt and force you to re-examine aspects of your life situation. It's also possible to discover things about yourself that you're uncomfortable with which can take time to process and accept. You may be challenged and things in your life may suddenly feel like they need to change. Your priorities and needs may change. It's best to be in a place where you're ready to face and adjust to the possibility of this.

On the other hand, you may become increasingly okay with accepting things as they are, including yourself and aspects of your life situation that previously seemed intolerable. This may get in the way of achieving current ambitions, as you may no longer see them as necessary or worth the costs. You can still choose to pursue them if you want but your drive and intention will change. You may come to question their value entirely. There are guided meditations available that feed desires and ambitions, if that's what you want. However, anything that encourages these things will draw upon and strengthen egoic outlooks and desires which can come with consequences.

It's possible to become attached to meditative states and dissatisfied or frustrated with what's around you. This is one reason why people might end up wishing to move somewhere isolated; so they can be alone and at peace after finding daily life to be increasingly noisy and stressful when compared to the peace enjoyed in the solitude of meditation. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but ideally we would be able to bring the silence with us wherever we go, no matter what's going on outside.

As you grow in self awareness and become intimate with your unconscious patterns, you may also become naturally more able to see how others are being controlled by theirs. This can enable you to sidestep chaotic situations you might previously have gotten entangled in but you may also find yourself becoming increasingly incomprehensible on a deeper level to the majority of people. Since others can only meet us as deeply as they've gone within themselves, you may often find yourself adjusting to meet others where they are. You'll likely feel this intuitively and do it automatically, if you want to.

Your understanding and experience of reality and yourself/others in relation to it could change. You'll know this and see it in your mind but it may be very hard to articulate.

Becoming increasingly aware of how outside forces influence you may make you more selective with what you engage with and consume. This can impact lifestyle and relationships quite a lot, and it may be difficult for others to understand why you're making some changes.