Please read two books, in this order. After reading these, you will know:
1. Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratna [0]
2. The Mind Illuminated by Yates et al. [1]
And plese steer away from awful sources. People, the modern day "influencers" are piggybacking on Meditation to sell their own stuff. And it is related to a lot of stupid concepts that higher practitioners of Eastern Spirituality themselves reject. "Kundalini"... My ass.
Meditation, when reduced to the physical technique itself, is utterly worthless, I assure you. There are several 5-minute videos that teach you meditation are shit.
________
Since you want to know about personal experience, let's do that.
I also fell prey to the snake-oil salesmen at first, who taught meditation in five minutes.
I tried for months and years, and nothing came out of it.
When I was going through a list of books recommended in Hacker News, I learned about The Mind Illuminated by Yates.
I bought it and started studying, and practising.
And, I promise you it changed my life.
I meditate from 15 to 45 minutes a day. Everyday.
I will list here some aspects of it.
I sit there, I observe my thoughts, and gently bring my mind back to my breaths.
Primarily, it is like "intuition training" for attention holding.
Whenever I am doing work or studying for my research, whenever my mind deviates, this training kicks in, in an automated way. I can very quickly bring it back. And it does get better with time.
My fully-sanctitious Pomodoro cycle went up from 20 minutes to 90 minutes. I can hold my attention, unadulterated, for that long.
This was the first benefit.
Secondly, I am much better at processing my own emotions. Every kind. I am much saner and calmer for it. I can process and handle and deal with all my emotions.
Thirdly, I am a much better decision maker from meditating. Before, I often suffered with my options. I could not decide what to do- from small decision to big.
Now, it's like my emotions are wiretapped and I know better what I want. And I can act accordingly.
And I am able to enjoy pleasurable activities more. Swimming, walking through the forest, eating favorite dishes, sex- all are much more pleasurable for me.
I feel the "training" from meditation kicking in when I want to have deep experiences.
I am also a better learner now. This could be a placebo. I always was a good and fast learner, but, I have more experience with myself now, but I feel this happened from meditation.
Meditation is hard. I always was interested in Buddhism (the non-spiritual kind. Read: What the Buddha Taught by W. Rahula [2]). And Buddha was a total no-BS guy. He asked people to experiment and if they didn't find the results alignigning with what he said, he said that he should not be listened to [3]. So, if he asked to meditate, and talked about its benefits, there must be something in it- that's what I thought. That's why I prevailed.
Learning coding took time. Learning Math and Spanish took time. Meditation should take time to be learned properly. Buddha, an athiest, an unorthodox, an uber-debater, and rationalist talked about benefits of it, and that made me prevail.
I am so happy for it.
Please reply to my comment if you have further questions.
I am currently on the deep peace stage. Seven times out of ten, when I try to be in the deeply peaceful state, I can be.
1. Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratna [0]
2. The Mind Illuminated by Yates et al. [1]
And plese steer away from awful sources. People, the modern day "influencers" are piggybacking on Meditation to sell their own stuff. And it is related to a lot of stupid concepts that higher practitioners of Eastern Spirituality themselves reject. "Kundalini"... My ass.
Meditation, when reduced to the physical technique itself, is utterly worthless, I assure you. There are several 5-minute videos that teach you meditation are shit.
________
Since you want to know about personal experience, let's do that.
I also fell prey to the snake-oil salesmen at first, who taught meditation in five minutes.
I tried for months and years, and nothing came out of it.
When I was going through a list of books recommended in Hacker News, I learned about The Mind Illuminated by Yates.
I bought it and started studying, and practising.
And, I promise you it changed my life.
I meditate from 15 to 45 minutes a day. Everyday.
I will list here some aspects of it.
I sit there, I observe my thoughts, and gently bring my mind back to my breaths.
Primarily, it is like "intuition training" for attention holding.
Whenever I am doing work or studying for my research, whenever my mind deviates, this training kicks in, in an automated way. I can very quickly bring it back. And it does get better with time.
My fully-sanctitious Pomodoro cycle went up from 20 minutes to 90 minutes. I can hold my attention, unadulterated, for that long.
This was the first benefit.
Secondly, I am much better at processing my own emotions. Every kind. I am much saner and calmer for it. I can process and handle and deal with all my emotions.
Thirdly, I am a much better decision maker from meditating. Before, I often suffered with my options. I could not decide what to do- from small decision to big.
Now, it's like my emotions are wiretapped and I know better what I want. And I can act accordingly.
And I am able to enjoy pleasurable activities more. Swimming, walking through the forest, eating favorite dishes, sex- all are much more pleasurable for me.
I feel the "training" from meditation kicking in when I want to have deep experiences.
I am also a better learner now. This could be a placebo. I always was a good and fast learner, but, I have more experience with myself now, but I feel this happened from meditation.
Meditation is hard. I always was interested in Buddhism (the non-spiritual kind. Read: What the Buddha Taught by W. Rahula [2]). And Buddha was a total no-BS guy. He asked people to experiment and if they didn't find the results alignigning with what he said, he said that he should not be listened to [3]. So, if he asked to meditate, and talked about its benefits, there must be something in it- that's what I thought. That's why I prevailed.
Learning coding took time. Learning Math and Spanish took time. Meditation should take time to be learned properly. Buddha, an athiest, an unorthodox, an uber-debater, and rationalist talked about benefits of it, and that made me prevail.
I am so happy for it.
Please reply to my comment if you have further questions.
I am currently on the deep peace stage. Seven times out of ten, when I try to be in the deeply peaceful state, I can be.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-G...
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrati...
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/What-Buddha-Taught-Expanded-Dhammapad...
[3]: https://becoming-buddha.com/ehipassiko-come-and-see-for-your...