Omer from Istanbul/Turkey

[photonist]

Hi everyone,

I am Omer from Istanbul and 21 years old. I am excited and motivated for meditation yet i cant seem to find reliable instruction and information about meditation. And considering there are lots of techniques/methods for it. i am kind of confused like which one should i pick etc. I kinda feel like i need an instructor, someone to guide me and answer my questions after doing 'all the googling' and having fundamental knowledge about it.

What books/links/sources would you recommend for me, i feel like i should just "do" instead of thinking about it but i need a proper technique to adopt instead of doing it wrong and wasting my excitement about it.
And one question, since alcohol or any kind of drugs/psychoactive chemicals are unallowed before 24 hours to meditation, would ssri antidepressant medications affect my meditation experience? I will still do it though but it would be good to confirm it

Thank you so much and i m glad to be here

peace !

[Hazelkay]

Welcome to the forum!

I recommend you to download the free meditation course which gives great instructions.

My favourite book is by Paul Wilson - called The Quiet - it deals with three main approaches to meditation and lots of good advice.

It is conceivably possible that your antidepressant medication may affect your meditation experience - but as you have no benchmark to measure it against, I think it would be irrelevant.

I may be wrong, but from your post it seems like you may have some idea about what a 'meditation experience' would be like?

Meditation experiences vary wildly between meditators and also from session to session for each individual meditator. The experience you have in any meditation session is neither good nor bad - it just is. What is important is that you don't react to it.

Meditating brings up all sorts of stuff from deep inside. It brings it to the surface so that we can deal with it in a better way than when it got put in.
The way to deal with it in meditation is just to be aware of what is happening, just as an observer.

An unconcentrated, agitated meditation session can be a great sign that stuff has come up. If we can just accept that this is the way it is just now, the 'stuff' will lose all its oomph and we will will be a little lighter.

As you are taking anti-depressants, it is important that you go slowly while you are finding your feet in meditation. Start with ten minutes at a time and see how you go. If after a week, you feel you are handling it well and it is too little add another five minutes.

Keep us posted!

Hope this was helpful
peace and joy

[photonist]

i appriciate your response dear Hazelkay,

I ve started meditating since 3-4 days. It is strange that normally i do not wake up during sleep like at times between 03:00 or 04:00 am. and i kinda see more vivid dreams and have better dream recalling ability. And best thing about it is its like i can detach my emotions from myself. when i am not meditating and get upset i do what i do as in meditating just focus beyond my thoughts, the feeling what breathing makes on my stomach or the cool breeze feeling occurs on my nostrils when i breathe while meditating, if i focus that good and avoid making trains from thoughts and just focus back to that feeling i get ability to observe myself and it is absolutely true that mind is "mad monkey" without medtative education. And strangely i kinda like myself more not in mythological greek sense hehe. Like i accept myself as who i am and i know the fact that i do not know myself nnot a little bit i gotta discover and make something of myself by meditating and learning about myself. Maybe thats the reason why they wrote 'know thyself' in Delphi temple. I use earplugs and will use eye mask to deprive any sensory distractions until i grow enough up to be able to not get distracted by environmental causes.

[photonist]

And it seems that when a thought comes up to my mind, instead of digging it more and making more thoughts from it, if i just 'let go' and avoid thinking that is actual control instead of desperately trying to focus from thought to thought. Its like if your mind is a water/ocean surface normally its affected by environmental and other stimulants but not actual 'you'. That causes ripples and waves like a chaos. But if you mute all those causes it becomes calm and you can form any wave you want. I noticed how anxious and actually negative thoughts a not trained mind has. i hope and will try to train my mind.

with same hopes as i wish myself to everybody here
peace!

[photonist]

are these placebo effects or natural byproducts of meditation and self awareness attempts. i kinda like myself more because i kind of realized that everyone on this planet is same no matter how rich, smart, successful they can be in life, so if i hate myself after realizing that it would be an ignorant behaviour. And i wake up so thrilled to actually live the life awake and meditate instead of numb myself in dreams and pass the time to kill time so maybe pain would go away.

It really changes you

[Hazelkay]

Hi photonist,

Seems like you are doing OK to me.

Thoughts just come by themselves and you are wisely not following them. Just let them come and go - like you are lying on your back watching the clouds drift into this shape and that shape - behind them the sky is still a beautiful blue.

How we are feeling also comes and goes - joy arises and passes away, pain arises and passes away, same with fear, anger, misery etc etc - if we just watch what is happening and don't get involved with it we don't add in additional dramas.

It's a fascinating way to live
peace and joy