Why You Should Not Wait for an Effect During Meditation

“I didn’t feel anything” in meditation does not mean that nothing happened: it is not about an “effect,” but about expanding perception.

Why we expect an “effect” from meditation

There is a very common story: a person sits down to meditate and waits for an effect. Silence should come, the body should relax, light should appear, things should become calmer, something should open up. And if nothing like that happens, the person says: “It didn’t work for me.” But who said that meditation has to have that particular effect?

If meditation is an expansion of perception, then the entire range of different states can come in it: from a headache to complete relaxation, from clear vision to blurriness, from silence to terrible noise. Fear may come, calm, a vision of darkness; a state may come in which nothing can be described.

A person wants to get a clear result, because a result can be put in your pocket, and you can say: “I had a meditation. I have sat in meditation for a thousand hours. I do this. I am working on my spiritual development.” But a genuine state is often arranged completely differently.

If you are in complete silence, you have no mental layer, no psychophysical layer with which to describe that silence.

If you then come out of it and try to remember, you remember only a part, remnants — a certain reflection. The very space you are in at that moment may be completely inaccessible, which is often what happens.

“I didn’t feel anything” does not mean nothing happened

So “I didn’t feel anything” does not always mean that nothing happened. What’s more, from the point of view of the spiritual world, these things are not connected at all.

Next time you see, experience, remember or feel something during meditation — or, on the contrary, feel nothing — try not to seize on it as an evaluation. Try not to get carried away by these states, not to attach importance to them. Don’t rush to say whether it worked or not. Don’t rejoice at the impression, don’t be frightened by the noise, don’t conclude that there was no silence.

Go deeper — but not for the sake of a new sensation, not for an impression, not so that you can later tell people, “I saw something,” but for the sake of exploring the truth, exploring the world, understanding yourself, understanding the people around you. Because if the desire to get a sensation drives you, that sensation already has power over you.

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