Question? Getting irritated while meditating?

[Isabella SilverRain]

Hi,

I've been meditating for about a month now, and I have a question. About twenty to thirty minutes after I meditate, I get really irritated, and I get pissed off at little things. I don't know why . . . I thought that meditations were supposed to calm you? All I am doing is breathing meditations.

Any thoughts?



-Isabella SilverRain

[Xander67]

well, twenty minutes is quite a stretch for only one month...

try cutting your meditation periods down to 10 mins for a while and then gradually increase the time...

The mind and the body need to be trained. Irritation, agravation, etc these are all common.. but my advice is untill you get more practical experience keep em short ..

trust me, your body and your mind will put up quite a fight which is why the goal of meditation is to focus the mind..

It takes monks years to get to where they can go for as long as they do..

In the front section of Alester Crowley's book "magic in practice and theory" (liber abba) there is a good bio on him and it details his ordeals that he went through to gain mastery of his mind...

try sitting stil for 5 minutes and not moving a muscle... as soon as you try, everything fights you, the nose itches, eyes, etc... and the more you ignore it the worse it gets... and yet monks are able to sit in lotus for days...

[Kailen]

My very first meditation was half an hour, so personally I don't think this is due to length of time. Meditation opens up the mind to everything around it. It is possible that you are opening yourself to energies/influences which are causing irritation to build. I have a meditation excercise which I am going to suggest, it is more than a simple breathing excercise as it brings in basic grounding, shielding and projection techniques. I would advise practising the first three steps, perfecting those before progressing on to the fourth step.




Meditation


Introduction:

Meditation is useful in energy work for many reasons. Partly because it aids in gaining and maintaining the focus you need to work with energy. Also, it can aid in facing doubts, insecurities and other such burdens of life that will distract from your focus on energy. You can focus and work with energy during your meditations to ground, cleanse, shield and heal. Meditation can provide you with an easier means to astral project, travel the astral and to talk to your spirit guides. In short, meditation is a fundamental part of any type of energy work. You may not need to meditate as much to work with energy as you progress, but it always remains useful.

Here is a basic guide on how to meditate:


Step 1:

Lay in a place that you are comfortable and can relax, incense, candles and meditation music may help with this. This can be either in the home or somewhere that is calming and soothing to you, such as the hills, forest, riverside, seaside etc. Close your eyes and deepen your breathing, each breath long and slow. Still your mind, emptying it of even the tiniest thoughts. Feel the weight of your body and visualise your being sinking into the earth, as if growing roots that extend from you into the earth's core. This is to ground yourself, so that you maintain a tie with the physical plane whilst the mind is elsewhere.


Step 2:

Now you have grounded yourself (still concentrating on your breathing and maintaining the rooted feeling), tense every muscle in your body one at a time, starting at your feet and working up. When your whole body is tense, slowly relax. As you relax visualise the tension, stress and anxieties of life flowing out of you, making you lighter, leaving you completely calm and relaxed (you may want to do this more than once). This is to cleanse yourself, so that you are free of all negative energies through the meditation.


Step 3:

Visualise a ball of white light above you, it grows and expands filling your whole vision until everywhere you look, you see the white light. The white light then flows down into you, washing through the fibres of your being and pushing out everything else until it fills you completely. This is to cleanse you of all negative emotions and energies. Begin to push the white light out from you in all directions, it stretches, still filling your body but growing outwards. Push it out in a ball around you, the edge approximately twice your arms length away from you. You, calm, safe and relaxed, are in the centre of the ball with everything else outside it, held out and away by the ball. This is to shield yourself, to stop negative energies from attaching to you.


Step 4:

Visualise a place that is calming and comforting to you, to be your place. This could be a forest, a meadow, a river, the seaside or anywhere, just as long as it is a calm, soothing and comforting. Visualise the smells and sounds as if you were there, see the place around you as if you were standing in it. Hear the breeze rustling over the land, feel it brushing over your skin. Smell the fresh, clean air, the scent of the forest, meadow, seaside carrying on the breeze. Feel the calm, safety and comfort of this place surround your being. Explore this place, walk through it, it is yours to do as you wish, your creation and your personal space on the astral.

[Nitefalle]

Next time you meditate, be sure you ground afterwards. It could just be excess energy that you unconsciously focused during meditation, trying to find its way out. I know that when I am overwhelmed with energy, my patience disappears and my fuse gets a lot shorter.

[Isabella SilverRain]

Thanks for all of your answers! It means a lot!

Xander67: I wasn't meditating for twenty minutes. I have been meditating from 7 to 10 minutes. I was saying that twenty minutes after I was done meditating, I got angry. Sorry for the confusion! :ggrief:

Kailen: Thanks for sharing that meditation with me! I'll be sure to try it out tonight!

Nitefalle: Thanks for the advise! I'll be sure to ground afterwards.

Thanks again!!

[kotu]

i have never sat down to meditate (too annoying) but i try to meditate every second by watching my own thoughts and trying to not think

[SilverClaw]

Hi,

I've been meditating for about a month now, and I have a question. About twenty to thirty minutes after I meditate, I get really irritated, and I get pissed off at little things. I don't know why . . . I thought that meditations were supposed to calm you? All I am doing is breathing meditations.

Any thoughts?



-Isabella SilverRainMeditations are suppose to do alot of things calming is one of many of such things :) And as already mentioned grounding is important, and there are many ways to do it, so just find a way that works for you :)

take care :)

[greenmoon]

Styles of meditation like Vipassana will often bring up irritation, anger, grief and all sorts of inner emotions and 'Karma' for the aim of purifying it. In their course they make the distinction between anapana which is concentration or meditation leading to samadhi and Vipassana which leads to wisdom and Enlightenment. Most Vipassana styles I've come across will use anapana as a bridge to Vipassana.

[Thyrsos]

You need to specify whether by meditation you mean Zen or something else.

"A wild elephant is never so wild as when it is first chained."

[Lylian]

I was just wondering are your thoughts making you angry or is it the noise aruond you? When I first started meditating I would get upset because every little noise seemed so loud. I started to use earphones with meditation music. After I got better at meditation I didn't need them anymore.

[Isabella SilverRain]

RavensEye - Thanks so much!

greenmoon - Thank you for the information, I've never heard of Vipassana before!

Thyrsos - I don't actually know what 'kind' of meditation I'm doing . . . it's just breathing exercises and trying to keep my mind from wondering.

Lylian - I do get mad at the sounds sometimes, but when I'm trying to keep my thoughts under control, and I slip up and start thinking of something, I can get really mad at myself. Thanks for pointing that out!!

[nebetmiw]

Here is a easy grounding out exersize. Touch the floor with your hands and see the excess energy entering the earth. You can at same time pull up some peaceful energy to balance yourself.

[Garm]

I don't actually know what 'kind' of meditation I'm doing . . . it's just breathing exercises and trying to keep my mind from wondering.


I would say that is the problem right there

"The mind" doesn't like getting bossed around, especially if it's used to being free to wander as it chooses

Another possibility is some latent empathy coming to the surface, was there some one in your vicinity getting really PO'd about something

I've always found trying to still my mind to be something of a struggle and progress was only made by a grim determination to be master in my own house, as it were

The peace and relaxation just were not part of it for me, at least at first

[WolfWhoSings]

The trouble I've had with meditation in the past is that of the "mind" as well. My conscious mind needs a "toy" such as the sound of a drum or a mantra to keep it occupied while "I" get on with it.

Otherwise my "mind" will sit there and say "I am quiet! I am so quiet! Quiet as a churchmouse! Yup! Just sittin' here, bein' all quiet and meditational and wow, is it quiet!"

[Anchoresque]

The trouble I've had with meditation in the past is that of the "mind" as well. My conscious mind needs a "toy" such as the sound of a drum or a mantra to keep it occupied while "I" get on with it.

Otherwise my "mind" will sit there and say "I am quiet! I am so quiet! Quiet as a churchmouse! Yup! Just sittin' here, bein' all quiet and meditational and wow, is it quiet!"

:lol: Exactly!

[Beemer_Man_Wong]

Thats interesting...20 minutes after meditating? Perhaps it is that meditating is removing you from your troubles, and then when you return to the world, you return to your suffering. This is why meditation as an escape will never work. Only meditation as deep looking to find the root of your suffering will actually help you remove suffering from your life. Gautama called this deep looking Visspassana. In Visspassana, you stop, calm the body, recognize your emotions as they are, name and care for your feelings, look deeply for the cause of the feeling. Often times, when you find the cause, that insight will allow that mental formation to let go.

It is not often you hear of irritation /after/ meditation, more often you hear it happening during the meditation process. Could it be that meditation has taxed your energy (or you've used up too many spoons, if you like the spoon theory metaphor better) and your irritation comes from tiredness, hunger or some other low energy state? In that situation, it is best to nourish the body and you will find the irritation may decrease dramatically. I myself have this very problem.