Ashok Gupta explains why meditation can spike anxiety: it releases repressed emotions like steam from a pressure cooker. He contrasts guided visualizations, which direct the mind, with meditative witnessing, which trains you to observe thoughts without getting pulled into them. Beginners may struggle but persistence teaches the mind to stay the observer.
Now, in this particular session, we introduce meditation. And I know for some people, when they first start meditation, it can actually.
Make them more anxious. Now, why is that? The reason is that we imagine our.
Mind is like a pressure cooker and.
Think of all the pressure that's built up through all the different patterns which have been occurring. And suddenly you meditate, which is like.
Putting your hand on the little valve.
On top of the pressure cooker. Does anyone cook with a pressure cooker these days? I'm not sure, but we certainly do.
When we're making, you know, certain pulses and lentils. So you pick up the little valve.
At the top and all the steam comes out.
Now, that is what happens in meditation.
All that steam which is built up is now being slowly observed to be.
Allowed to be released, all that repressed emotion and tension. And this can mean that it makes.
Us more anxious because our mind is focused on all these different thoughts. And although we're attempting to be the.
Observer in meditation, we see all these little thoughts, and we get pulled away with that anxiety. Now, if that sounds like you, then.
You can use some of the other.
Meditations on the online system, such as.
The Waves of Healing meditation, which is not really a meditation, it's more a visualization. So that's the Waves of Healing visualization. Or you can use the surrender meditation, which is once again, more a guided visualization. And a new one that we've just.
Added to the online system is called.
The Acceptance and Surrender Meditation, which is what we'll talk about in a little while. So Acceptance and Surrender Meditation is also like a visualization and guiding you through certain changes.
So visualization directs your mind in a particular direction. And meditation enables you to be the observer, the conscious witnessing, awareness that observes.
The noise in the mind.
And that's how they're different.
And sometimes, when we haven't been the.
Observer in our lives for many years, if ever, when we start observing, it's.
Too difficult to maintain the observer position.
The mind gets pulled into the swirl of the thoughts, and the anxiety increases. But remember, that will change.
So just because you're feeling like that.
Now, keep coming back to the meditation a day later, perhaps a week later.
And eventually your mind will get the.
Hang of it, and it will be.
Able to use that as a healing process.
