Photograph taken at the now derelict Maharishi Mahesh Ashram during my trip to Rishikesh, India in 2016.
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Back in 2010 I had what could be described as a spontaneous spiritual experience during a meditation class I went to in Tasmania. The purpose, therefore, of this article is to discuss spiritual experiences during meditation in what I hope to be a safe and open space.
It’s particularly for those of you who, like me, don’t belong to any religion, spiritual group, or even belief system, so in many ways lack a framework in which to articulate or understand these experiences in relation to the modern world we live in today.
While this article focuses specifically on spiritual experiences during meditation, I know spiritual experiences or awakenings can occur at any time in life — suddenly or gradually, including outside of meditation, so perhaps this article will also interest you too.
To talk or not to talk about spiritual experiences during meditation?
I first want to address the point of talking about meditation experiences full stop, because sometimes it’s not recommended. However, I would argue that sometimes it’s important or even beneficial, especially if you don’t belong to a particular religion, spiritual practice or school of thought.
It’s almost been a decade since my first glimpse into the profound, life changing world that is meditation. Yet I’ve hesitated to write about it in any detail or even share my own insights with others. Why? Because for some reason, there’s been this underlying feeling that you shouldn’t talk about your meditation experiences, unless it’s with your teacher.
But what if you don’t have a regular teacher? What if your spiritual experience during meditation was unexpected or completely spontaneous? What if you don’t belong to a particular group, religion, or spiritual school of thought and have no way of making sense of what happened to you or relating it to the modern world we live in today?
What if your experience in meditation was scary and you don’t know what to make of it because you haven’t met anyone else with a similar experience? I would therefore like to argue that there is a place for talking about these experiences.
In a world that can seem only dualistic and quite the opposite of what you may have experienced in your meditation, isn’t it more important than ever to share?
We are far from empty
I would also like to add that my experience with meditation occurred several years after I was on antidepressants for six months during my last year of University. For a long time I’d been seeking answers to who we are behind our minds, thoughts, opinions, identities… and I kind of hit this void space of what just felt like horrible emptiness.
At the time, because I was only 20, I figured that this was just how everyone felt as an adult and I was just more sensitive and unable to deal with it as well. This so called void space I initially experienced, however, became completely the opposite of void during my meditation in Tasmania.
This is something I’ve taken with me and still believe today. We are far far from being empty inside. I don’t really want to label it Soul, God, or Energy in this article, but in my opinion, we are so much more — in the most amazing way ever — than our minds, thoughts, opinions…And if anyone, is feeling numb or empty inside, please know it’s just temporary.
Reasons for not talking about spiritual experiences in meditation
I’ve given some reasons for talking about spiritual experiences during meditation, but what about reasons for not talking?
If you have a regular meditation practice and teacher, and you then start practising other forms of meditation and discussing your experiences with everyone and people have conflicting comments, it could become quite confusing for you, especially if it’s guidance or clarification you’re after.
Similarly, when people open the space up for discussing meditation experiences in a class or even an article like this, it’s important to not let the ego get involved. You might start comparing yourself to others, or thinking you’re really far down the meditation/spiritual path, or not far enough…Experiences in meditation aren’t just another thing to consume, get or accomplish in life.
For example, I believe that after my experience in Tasmania, because I lacked a framework to consciously articulate or make sense of what happened, my ego got involved, and for a while thought I was really far down the meditation path. This actually hindered my practice for about a year as I was always trying to get back to that same place. I believe I experienced that meditation at the time I did because I needed it.
My own spiritual experience during meditation
I want to start by saying that what I’m about to write comes purely from my own experiences, and observations, and shouldn’t be taken as hard fact. It’s not my place right now to define what a spiritual experience in meditation is or isn’t.
To give you some context about my own experience, I was 24, working in Tasmania Australia, and the relationship I was in had just ended. I wasn’t in a bad place, but I was feeling a bit lost and existential, wondering what I was going to do next with my life. Then one evening I decided to go to a local meditation class.
Although I was curious about meditation and had been to the odd class, I didn’t practice regularly and was actually confused by it. If anything, I was a bit wary, as a few years before this, I’d had a pretty scary out of body experience — which happened outside of practising meditation, but it left me feeling unsettled about anything of a so called ‘otherworldly’ or spiritual nature.
The meditation, however, in Tasmania was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. In many ways it’s difficult to articulate and I don’t want the intricacies of my experiences to dominate this post, but I do think it’s important to share, because sometimes it’s helpful when you read something and find lots of others have had a similar experience to you, and there’s nothing unusual about it.
The style of meditation was called Open Heart Meditation, and rather than focusing on the head or space between the eyes, we instead focused on the heart centre at the centre of the chest.
During the meditation I felt my whole physical body dissolve and then the sensation of merging and feeling connected to everything. That cliched saying ‘being at one’ you hear all the time became my reality for a short time in a way I’d never experienced before. There was also the presence of what I can only describe as a sort of beautiful coiled dancing light that I knew could never be destroyed.
After the meditation, there was chance to talk and I remember one woman saying “I don’t even know what to say or how to describe what just happened to me. If I tell people they’ll think I’ve been taking drugs.” It seemed that everyone had had some incredibly profound and meaningful experience — many in the class were new to meditation. It was this that really intrigued me.
Afterwards, I did chat to the teacher one to one for a short time who mentioned kundalini energy to me, which I’d never heard of and I remember writing ‘Condolini’ down. It was the first time I’d heard of kundalini energy.
It was this that inspired me to reach out to Jeanette Amlie who had been researching kundalini energy. You can read my interview with her here:
Kundalini energy interview with Jeanette Amlie
Since that class in Tasmania, I took up meditation as a regular practice, trying out many different styles, learning as much as I could, and interviewing people about their meditation practices.
Here are some of my thoughts and observations
The power of the beginner’s mind, naivety, and being open
For a while I wondered why so many of us in that meditation class in Tasmania had had such deep experiences — but more importantly, many of us were new to meditation.
I hadn’t read hundreds of books telling me what and when I should be experiencing certain things in meditation, so the inner analyst in me just wasn’t there at all during the class. I had next to no preconceptions, judgements or expectations — I was just there in the state of openness to experience the class for what it was, and I think the others were too.
I’ve since read the book Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind (Amazon affiliate link) by Shunryu Suzuki and been to several Zen meditation classes, including an all night meditation celebrating the Buddha’s enlightenment which was hard to stay awake but a beautiful experience. While Zen is not my regular meditation, this book had a real impact on me.
Suzuki, talks about the importance of the beginner’s mindset in meditation. The less you know actually becomes your greatest asset, because rather than adding more, meditation is often the process of unveiling and peeling back, so the fewer judgements you have to start with, the smoother the ride may be for you.
This is a lesson I’ve since tried to apply to life itself, and in many ways it’s about cultivating a state of naivety. During the state of naivety, you can experience things, people, situations, more clearly for what they are in that moment. The inner critic can then make an appearance afterwards, but if it makes an appearance too soon, meditation becomes very difficult.
After that one meditation class, my practice actually suffered because I was trying to get back to the same state. I had also been given a glimpse into a deep state of meditation, and therefore, found it very difficult to approach each session afresh.
Does the ego ever really leave us?
I have no fixed answer here. For me, the ego has been this character that kind of switches from driver to passenger at various times in my life, but it’s very much still here. Before the meditation class, my ego was feeling bruised and was slumped on a back seat somewhere feeling a bit like I was drifting and failing a bit at life.
When I started to read more about meditation afterwards and relate my experience to what people had already written about meditation, my ego actually got a boost perhaps temporarily in a negative way. I had no idea that a spiritual ego could exist, but it definitely can! There was even a point when I thought I’d somehow transcended my ego, which now makes me cringe a bit.
Do we ever get rid of our egos? If meditation has the potential of giving us a glimpse into a timeless state of being, then why do we sometimes treat our meditation practices as a linear process, or the state of egolessness as goal to reach?
Perhaps momentarily we can glimpse egoless states, and maybe for some that lasts forever, for others it might be temporary. Or maybe ego death is more about ego transcendence. It’s always there, but it’s just not as important as it once was. I’d be curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.
The power of group meditation
I am convinced that there is power in a lot of people meditating together. Perhaps during that meditation class in Tasmania, there were a few people in that room who somehow lifted everyone else up into the same state as them, so we were all influencing each other in our meditation — as if we were somehow designed to sync up and be at one in our meditations and also with each other. I guess, you could relate this to a huge sport event or music concert, yet everyone was quiet with their eyes closed.
During my time in my last visit to India to do my second yoga teacher training in Rishikesh, I had the pleasure of chatting to a long term Transcendental Meditation™ practitioner. While I’m actually yet to practice this form of meditation for myself, there’s a lot of research that has gone into this technique.
One study I learnt about was the Maharishi Effect, which discovered that “when 1% of a community practiced the Transcendental Meditation (TM®) program, the crime rate was reduced by 16% on average.” You can read about the full study here Maharishi Effect
With all this in mind, just because there could be power in group meditation, it doesn’t mean you won’t somehow go as deep in your meditation practice if you meditate alone at home. In Sivananda yoga — and many other schools of thought, for example, they believe in meditating in the same space every day or creating a designated space in your home to meditate, which is said to heighten the energy in that space.
I’ve tried to take all of these things with a pinch of salt because I don’t want my meditation practice to suffer if I’m away from home or somewhere noisy. I don’t want to start placing conditions on my practice, especially as I have a baby now and will often mediate with him tied to me in his sling or even feeding.
Context and state of mind prior to a spiritual experience in meditation
After Tasmania, I tried to find descriptions of what I’d experienced by turning to existing meditation practices. In all the books I’ve read — especially the older yogic texts — I’ve only read a few that even mention context and states of mind prior to or after a spiritual experience.
I go into further detail at the end of this article, but The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening (Amazon affiliate link) by Steve Taylor is one of the books that talks about scenarios where awakenings are more likely to happen and places them in context by talking about the events that precede the experience.
Attempting to describe elements of spiritual experiences in meditation
Breaking down my own experience, and also that of others who I’ve spoken to, there are some similarities when it comes to spiritual experiences in meditation.
I don’t want to go into a huge amount of detail here, because in many ways, it might differ from person to person. I also don’t want anyone to treat the following as some sort of meditation checklist.
The purpose of mentioning some of these things is in a way an attempt to normalise what I felt was extremely natural.
Timelessness
The concept of time disappears. After that meditation class I felt like it could have lasted several hours or maybe just a few minutes, I really didn’t know, but I left with this feeling that time was not this linear process we experience in day to day life.
Expansion
The best way of describing this one is that I felt like there was a whole universe inside me and everyone. After that out of body experience several years prior to the Tasmania meditation, I felt really empty. I wished I’d never tried to be curious about what was beyond the mind, thought, and anything else we think makes us who we are.
What I previously felt, was an empty void underneath everything, but the Tasmania meditation experience gave me the opposite feeling, which I’m so incredibly grateful for.
On the one hand, I felt my consciousness expand outwards, but also deep inside too, and underneath everything and in all the space I previously thought was void, it was anything but. I’m not sure I’m able to describe this in any more detail.
The physical body dissolves
During the meditation, I was experiencing myself as a kind of energy — no longer aware of my physical body sitting there on my meditation cushion. I felt fluid as if my consciousness was dancing and connecting with everything else.
Connection
Experiencing the physical body dissolving and my consciousness somehow expanding, made me feel in that moment connected to everything. This was my comment at the end of the class. I remember saying thank you and that I had felt connected to everyone and everything during the meditation. This was, however, a temporary state of being, but one I will remember.
Light
The presence of light might also be there during a spiritual meditation experience. In my case, the light was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It was delicate and graceful but strong and indestructible at the same time.
Thoughts on labeling your experience
After my meditation, I was content with what had happened. I didn’t need any further explanation or understanding, but after a few days, I think it was my ego rising up saying, hey, I want some answers and labels to help make sense of all this.
Did I just have a kundalini awakening? Who knows. I actually don’t care anymore, but for several months afterwards, I did feel really wired and full of energy. However, I wasn’t sure if reading all this stuff about kundalini was just feeding my spiritual ego!
Where exactly was I now on the so called metaphorical ‘spiritual journey’? What was next? Where did I go from here? I tried out a few classes in the same meditation in London but didn’t resonate at all, so I remained outside of any particular spiritual practice or meditation lineage.
I was also wary about talking about my experience and thought, couldn’t I just be satisfied with it as it was without trying to define it or put any labels on it.
With all this in mind, I do think it’s only natural to want to seek some sort of understanding of what all this means in our modern world, which is perceived day to day as physical and often dualistic.
Thoughts on meditation being a linear process
Clearly a spiritual experience can happen at any point — whether you’ve been meditating for years or it’s your first class. I know there are some schools of meditation which I can see are attractive because there are stages of progression, and that’s totally OK.
Usually in life when we take up something new or learn a new skill, there are levels, and the more we practice the better we get or the further we go. I don’t actually think meditation works in this way though, unless you want it to or believe it to.
I’ve since tried out and continue to try all kinds of meditation and spiritual practices…10 day silent Vipassana meditation retreat, mantra meditation, Zen Buddhist meditation, gong baths, tea ceremonies, kundalini yoga…
This might sound like I’m on some sort of trivial meditation picnic — not taking any of these practices seriously, but this isn’t true at all. Intuitively it feels right. I will try out different meditations for a year or longer and observe. The beauty of me doing this is that I’ve stopped trying to reach any kind of spiritual milestones. I have no interest in trying to somehow get back to where I was or reach any sort of hypothetical meditation goals.
Each practice teaches me something new and has its place — and nothing has been superior or inferior. I really want to highlight this. Maybe all meditation practices eventually lead to the same point, but with different routes, and life lessons.
Vipassana meditation is something I didn’t continue with daily after my 10 day silent retreat, but the teachings of equanimity and how this can be applied to daily life is something that has stayed with me. My 10 days of meditating for 10 hours a day gave me a whole new way of perceiving ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ emotions, which is something no other practice has given me.
Some days, I go into a beautiful peaceful state of meditation, other days I allow my thoughts to consume me and my mind just doesn’t want to be quiet. In these moments, I would probably be perceived as a really bad meditator, but who cares. Meditation police aren’t a thing.
What meditation am I currently practising?
For over three years now, I’ve been practising something called the Wim Hof Method power breath, sometimes with the addition of bhastrika breath. After this I go into a mantra meditation. Mantra meditation is something relatively new to me but I’ve been meditating with a mantra for over a year now after doing Deborah King’s online Be a Modern Master course (free masterclass affiliate link).
Here’s a short video where I demonstrate the Wim Hof breathing technique which I practise prior to meditating.
You can view the Wim Hof online course here (WHM affiliate link)
The best book I’ve read on spiritual experiences and/or awakenings in meditation
I read psychologist, Steve Taylor’s book The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening (Amazon affiliate link) just over a year ago, and then went to one of his talks about the book in London.
After years of reading about spiritual experiences in meditation, I was yet to read something that was written outside of a specific religion or spiritual practice. For the first time, someone had actually articulated what had happened to me and also normalised the experience, and related it to the world we’re living in right now.
If you’re searching for a deeper, amazingly articulated understanding of what your spiritual experience in meditation (or outside of meditation) is all about, I think this book is a must read.
Final thoughts
I know there are no hard answers or conclusions in this post, but I hope you’ve found it useful in some way. I think this is the kind of thing I’d have wanted to read back in 2010. Mediation is such a personal thing, with infinite routes and experiences that can lead us to a world as vast as the universe itself, which to me is like magic.
I don’t expect you to share your experiences here if you don’t want to but I would love to hear your thoughts if you have anything you’d like to add or say.
Thank you for reading.
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