Meditation Doesn't Calm You Down: Why Emotions Intensify After Practice

— Is it true that someone who meditates should be less angry, kinder, calmer, and more effective?

— What do you think?

— From my own experience, I don't think that's true.

— Do you still think those things should disappear within you, or not?

— I think that's something to work toward.

Sometimes I get angry and think I shouldn't, because I'm working on my spiritual development, reading, and meditating. I have those moments from time to time. But there is another side, when I understand that this is life. Perhaps this is how growth happens: I notice the state, observe it, and sometimes try not to fall into it, though I don't always manage. Then afterward, I look back and think, “There I go again.”

— Why do you think you shouldn't get angry?

— It seems that if you're working on spiritual development and meditating, you should be calm and able to control your state.

I'm more often irritable than calm after meditation. And someone might say to me, “Why are you angry? You just meditated.”

— I think it's your belief that you are more irritable after meditation. Certain states become heightened. The question is how thoroughly you are actually keeping track of every single meditation. And what does “more often irritable after meditation” mean? For five or ten minutes? For a day, two, three, or five days? A week? How did you measure it?

This is a purely rational, mental conclusion. If you want to observe it, you need to make notes, put down check marks, and measure it using certain parameters. The question is: how will you determine the level? Are you angry right now and controlling your anger, or are you really angry? What is it?

This is a very interesting thing. Some time ago, in a conversation, I asked what a true state is. Let's call it a true spiritual state, though that is something of an abstraction; “true state” is closer.

• Is it when a person is angry, sees that they are angry, and tries to work with it so they don't harm another person?
• Or are they angry and trying to work with it because they were given an assignment: put down check marks and don't get angry? That is considered a good indicator because someone said so.

If there is even the slightest sense that you are stopping your anger in order to be good in relation to the word “meditation” or to spiritual development—because people in spiritual development are “supposed” to be good and wonderful, because everyone around you will judge you and say, “Look at you! What kind of practices are you doing? It's all nonsense!”—if that is why you are doing it, you immediately leave the true path.

But if you work with it because you understand that it really matters—not because you meditate and “this shouldn't be happening there,” but because it is fundamentally so—that is a different quality of work.

It doesn't matter whether you meditate as a separate practice or have spent the past year living an ordinary life without once thinking about books or meditation. But when anger arises, you know clearly that you don't want to be angry toward other people, because you are destroying them. That is a very clear sign of what is happening.

If a state arises in you in which you “must not” be angry because you do these practices, that is a departure from the path. You need to see it: “Oh, that means I've strayed just now.” This is a very simple way to recognize what is actually happening.

You also added, “Someone doesn't like it.” So it all comes down to whether someone likes your actions. People often want to be in a blissful state so that society will recognize that state from the outside—not because it is truly happening, but so that other people won't crush their faith. They are afraid of losing that faith.

When this state arises, it is a question of faith. If you go back to the source and look, you immediately see the question: when this idea arises—“You shouldn't get angry if you meditate”—there is an inner distrust of everything that is happening. If you live with a full awareness and understanding of the spiritual world, you won't make that connection. Here, there is a certain distrust.

A person today, given the structure of their soul, their evolution, and their development, easily enters a state of doubt. I'm not saying this is positive, but it is their underlying condition now, and they are torn.

And this is very interesting: a person consists of different systems, different structures. Part of their system may be in complete trust, while another part is in a forgotten, suppressed state. That part will give rise to a lack of confidence. As a result, the person will feel discomfort, and this trigger will keep arising: a lack of faith. That is one side.

The other side is the anger itself. If you expand your perception, additional emotional tensions arise. That is completely normal.

Someone who has drunk alcohol often doesn't even feel pain in the moment. Why? Because their perception narrows. When your perception expands, naturally you begin to feel aggression. You may previously have suppressed your own anger and not felt it. You may also begin to see things that are unacceptable to you, things you simply didn't notice before. They can arouse very strong anger at what is happening: “How can this even be happening here? You said this didn't exist, but it does. You said it wasn't like this.” That can cause strong anger.

It is like a child in adolescence. Rudolf Steiner describes this period very well. Why does a teenager get angry and protest? Because they expected to be told the truth about the spiritual world and its nature, and they weren't told. An automatic protest arises. It may then fade, but it still accompanies the person throughout life, because an inner division remains.

This is a very interesting aspect. We can see both light and dark images in icons. But a person is inclined to revere the mere fact that there is an image. The question arises: how do they understand what they are seeing? How do they distinguish it?

It is similar to situations in which people enter altered states of consciousness and encounter powerful energies. They perceive them as spiritual, as divine, without always understanding exactly what they are dealing with.

Every planet, in its spiritual aspect, has a demonic expression. There is, for example, the solar demon that appears every 666 years. There is Sorath. If a person in some altered state sees a divine, spiritual being, some profound, immense energy, they say, “Oh, I have seen.” But what exactly have you seen?

It is exactly the same when it comes to understanding the energy of anger. What is this energy? Where does it come from? Where does it enter from? Who is its source? What is its source? This is a very important part of what is happening.

If you “pour” poison into yourself every day, through food or in some other way, you will feel a certain state. And if your life is arranged so that you “can't do without it,” you will always feel that state. It may even intensify if, for example, you stop taking a painkiller. A person says, “I had some alcohol and felt better.” Why better? Because they narrowed their perception.

That is why, when a person begins meditating, they feel lighter. This is a very important aspect. They feel relief; they feel their perception expanding, a movement toward freedom, toward knowing the world, toward truth. But there is another side: this is coming to know the truth. And knowing the truth means understanding who is deceiving whom, and where you yourself are being deceitful.

Can you become angry because you realized that you yourself are deceiving someone? Of course. You expanded your perception and saw it, and anger or aggression arises. Why not? As for people connecting this with particular activities—well, they can.

I spend a lot of time in the garden, and someone may say I have regressed because I've started spending so much time with plants. Could that happen? Easily. For someone else, the fact that a person is so deeply involved with plants will be a sign of development.

Notice where all of this comes from. It comes from beliefs, including social ones. For example, the Soviet belief: “If you spend time in the garden, you're like a grandmother at her dacha.” This is a very interesting subject in meditation.

I had a conversation with my mother about this same subject. This continues the story, to help you take it in more deeply.

My mother is turning 70. She says, “I feel 35.” I reply, “And I feel 42.” She says, “I said the same thing when I was your age.” You can see her energy change; she perks up. I say, “I want to understand something. What does it mean to feel 35 when you're 70? What is that for?” At that moment, it really mattered to me to understand. She replies, “All my friends feel that way too—35.” Notice this very interesting aspect: she says that when she was 40, she felt 40. But at 70, she feels 35. I ask, “Why? Why do you need to feel that way?”

I say that at 70, I would like to feel 70. I'm 42 now; I don't want to feel 15, because I'm not 15. I want to feel what is actually there. What's more, if we are talking about this moment, the year 2026, I feel who I am as a spiritual being. Not completely, but I feel a certain extent of it. I have knowledge, perception, vision. And of course, I don't feel 42. I am much older in human years, in terms of experience, what I convey, how I think, and how I see. There is an immense “old age” here, in a good sense.

At the same time, I can enter different states. I can enter a state of great youthfulness. But fall back into being 15? No. I wouldn't even be able to speak in the same way. Yet as a spiritual being, at 15 I already had quite a profound perception. Because it was my spiritual being, and certain processes were taking place within me.

Of course, I didn't explain all this to my mother in those terms. I simply asked, “Mom, can you explain why, at 70, you don't want to feel 70?” She says, “Physically, of course, I feel that I'm 70. But not inside.” I ask, “What does it mean to feel 35?” This is a very important subject in becoming aware of age and understanding reality.

She says, “I have many interests, I feel alive, I want different things to happen.” I say, “So are you saying that none of that exists at 70? And that is why you attach it to a particular age?” That is exactly what happens. A person begins to see age as a problem.

That is why so many people suffer at 40: they experience age as a problem, as missed opportunities. They suffer at 45, at 50, even at 30. At 20 they are happy, and at 30 they are already suffering. Ten years have passed, and perhaps they are alone, or they aren't making a million, or they don't own an apartment. That's it: they already feel that life has passed them by. Then, at 70, a person begins to feel a lack of freedom. The point here isn't the number—60, 70, 80, or 90.

There is a book called The Age of Happiness. I once gave it to my mother. It describes people who begin doing different things later in life: someone takes up gymnastics, someone becomes a well-known artist, someone finds fulfillment in something else. It seems like a good book. But what does it do? It conveys the idea that “even at this age, you can be happy.” Yet this is a social construct. Society and the material world shaped this perception.

So books such as The Age of Happiness appear, showing people that they can experience joy even in this state. But a healthy organism, a healthy situation, a healthy spiritual system means precisely a state of deep wisdom at that age. That is the point: you are wise. You say, “I'm glad I'm 70. I am wise. I feel 70. I don't want to feel 20.”

At 20, for example, I wasn't wise. I didn't hear or perceive the world. To say that perception closes at 70… perhaps the opposite is true: it expands. After a certain age, after 49, a stage begins in which life becomes a study of what has happened. There are decades available for reflection. Of course, if at 70 a person remains nervous and eager to prove something, continuing to live in the same state as 20 years earlier, that is another matter.

You could put it this way: if my mother, for example, is 70 and considers herself 35, it is hard for her to begin feeling 70. More precisely, she feels 70 in her body, but not inside. It becomes even more difficult when a person is outside a state of real perception. If you are outside the actual space of reality, things only get worse for you, not better. That matters: worse, not better.

— Can you be spiritually mature and still want power and influence?

— That is a big question, but the short answer is yes. Lucifer is an example: a spiritually developed being who wants power.

Someone will say that he isn't a human being. But if we are talking about the systems of the spiritual world, about beings who have changed their path from serving truth to serving their own importance, it becomes clear that a person can also shift in this direction, even with a profound spiritual consciousness. Such a shift toward power, arrogance, and a desire to control is possible. It is real.

For many people, spiritual development is a social “check mark.” Just like an honors diploma, graduating from university, making the Forbes list, “served for ten years,” or “mother of ten children.” These are all social markers.

If you see spiritual development as this kind of check mark, you need to say honestly, “This mark tells us nothing about a person's kindness. Neither do the others. A person can have diplomas, status, and experience while being unkind, arrogant, and domineering. These things are not connected.”

What's more, it is important to understand that people who commit very grave acts, including people in power, often have a fairly strong spiritual structure. That matters to realize. The question is what that spiritual structure is connected to, which energies it is linked with.

Here is the essential choice: do you choose a person for external achievements—a diploma, money, status? Or a person who is moved by truth?

That is the question.

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