I started to meditate regularly when I was 24 years of age and have continued to do so for the past 28 years, virtually on a daily basis.
Like most people I used to believe that meditation is an excellent way to calm my mind and get back to peace and happiness in the midst of an otherwise hectic life-style. I also thought that the more you meditate the better it is for you.
While this belief is true to some extent, I have come to learn about another aspect of meditation that is much more challenging and is much less often talked about.
Basically, meditation is a gradual and controlled way to open up our unconscious mind and deal with all our unresolved issues that may be stored there. These issues encompass every trauma, ego slight and emotional hurt that we have experienced throughout our entire life and it also contains all unresolved issues from our former lives as well. All these problems will be gradually released into our consciousness throughout daily meditation, where we can deal with this material.
Here is an example about how this works: If we remember an emotionally painful situation during meditation that we had forgotten about, we can then send love to the person who has hurt us, which will resolve the issue. Or, if we feel shame about an incident, where we ourselves have hurt someone else, we need to send love to ourselves as well.
However, when too much of this unresolved material arises or if we are not taught how to deal with it, this can all become a bit overwhelming. We may get very confused, particularly when memories of past lives occur that we cannot understand. Our usual response to this scenario is to try to repress these uncomfortable memories and get back to our old sense of self. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. If we try to suppress this material we may get very uncomfortable physical symptoms like shaking, tingling or pain. This dynamic is called kundalini syndrome.
The kundalini syndrome develops when we meditate too much and are unable to deal with the strange, frightening and confusing sensations and perceptions arising from our unconscious mind.
While all this may sound frightening, it is good to be forewarned about it so as not to make the typical mistake of meditating even more. If you feel strange sensations while meditating it is best to reduce your mediation practice or even stop for a while. This will make it possible to work through all the material that has been released from your unconscious mind in a steady and controlled way.
