Getting scared during meditation

[Bring4th_Austin]

Hi space cat,

What you are experiencing is normal, especially for someone who is relatively new to spiritual seeking and meditating. Growing up and experiencing life within society, we repress many things, some of them overtly violent and traumatic experiences, some of them more implicit and subtle. Everyone has a shadow that is created from attempting to function within a family, within social circles, within belief systems, and within society in general which has ideas of appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

Whether something traumatic happens to us directly or whether we are chastised (in any subtle and various ways), our brains literally create neural pathways which cause our thought processes, actions, and experiences to avoid these things again. Because of this, we begin to go through life with a sort of mask and a hidden shadow beneath it.

Meditation and spiritual seeking are, in essence, attempting to connect us with the unconscious parts of ourselves. For beginners, the first thing we will encounter is this shadow which our brain actively attempts to avoid. The fear you are experiencing is this avoidance. Basically, your brain does not want you to look at these repressed things that are attempting to come forward once you silence your mind.

The idea that meditation alone will solve the problem isn't necessarily true. I was just listening to a talk from one of the most prominent Buddhist practitioners of the west who said that once meditation was becoming prominent in the West, they thought the practice would simply override the necessary work needed to become familiar and accepting of the Shadow. They eventually learned that, despite how much someone meditates, if their Shadow is ingrained enough, it will remain until it is consciously sought out and accepted. (And we all will have some aspects of Shadow throughout our entire lives.)

I think it's much more useful to look at these things in terms of aspect of self rather than negative entities. Sure, there are negative entities that exist, and these states of mind may attract (or be perpetuated by) negative beings, but the fear comes from you, and is ultimately your own responsibility to approach, understand, and accept whatever it is that is triggering the fear reaction (which could be a multitude of things). Protection rituals and the such may make it easier to do so, but ultimately we have to be okay with approaching these negative emotions and feelings and understanding them, as they will lead us deeper to the riches of Spirit. This is ultimately why, in Ra's archetypal system, the Matrix of the Spirit is represented by the Devil. This is similar to Jung's archetype of the Shadow.

There are probably a multitude of ways for you to successfully work with this feeling until you are able to meditate comfortably. One that I think could work is to attempt to find a state of both peace and inquisitiveness before entering into meditation in the darkness. Become curious about yourself, the depths of your being, and with the knowledge that the fear from the Shadow will lead you deeper, approach it. Attempt to hold the mindset of peace and curiosity at the same time as the fear arises. If you feel yourself slipping into a cycle of fear and you lose your peaceful mindset, don't attempt to dive deeper. The point of this exercise is to create neural pathways between these two neural configurations - the peace and curiosity, and the fear. That way the fear, as strange as it sounds, is not something that scares you, but is rather something that intrigues you that you want to learn more about. It's a calling to an adventure of the self where you enter the dark cave and find the dragon which is protecting the riches of your Self. But diving into the fear without the mindset of peace and curiosity would be akin to entering the cave without a torch for light - you may get lost and become more afraid. Activating that neural pathway alone can serve to "harden" it even more.

I think what has helped me personally the most in exploring these types of "negative" emotions and experiences is that the spiritual path is ultimately a path of self discovery, self awareness, and self liberation, and these things are the catalyst which point the way towards this ultimate realization of Self. In this sense I approach the negative emotions and experiences as a hero within my own myth, on my own journey, with bumps in the road and guardians on the threshold to transformation.