There are two primary reasons why you might experience fear during meditation. Let’s explore these in depth to better understand this common phenomenon.
Reason 1: Confronting Repressed Emotions
In our daily lives, we tend to suppress our emotions in various ways. We do everything we can to avoid looking within ourselves. Meditation, however, forces you to look inward. It compels you to face what you’re normally unwilling to confront.
This is why during meditation, you might experience fear, sadness, or anxiety. You might encounter all the emotions we typically label as “negative.” From a certain perspective, we can say that our life is one stratagem after another to avoid feeling the negative emotions within us. We avoid feeling sadness, anguish, guilt, and fear.
Meditation brings you face to face with these emotions. It allows you to experience these emotions so that you can free yourself from them.
The Danger of Emotional Suppression
Unfortunately, in everyday life, we avoid looking within ourselves in any way possible. This is why during meditation, it’s common to experience extremely strong emotions. During meditation retreats where people meditate for 4 or even 8 hours a day, it often happens that some people experience strong emotions during meditation, perhaps bursting into tears or even experiencing full-blown panic attacks. Looking within yourself is no joke. Seeing what you’ve perhaps avoided for years and years is scary.
The Paradox of “Negative” Emotions
Now, I’m defining these emotions as “negative,” but it’s also wrong to label them as such. To let go of these emotions, it’s necessary to abandon any type of label towards them. It’s necessary to fully experience them, to love your fear, to love your sadness, to love your anguish, to love your guilt.
Once you implement this process of acceptance – and acceptance and love are synonyms, at least in my vocabulary – the emotions inside you will become lighter, milder, and your inner state will transform.
Reason 2: Confronting the Death of the Ego
The second reason why you might experience fear during meditation is that the ultimate goal, the highest purpose of meditation, is union with the divine. To unite with the divine, it’s necessary for you to face the death of the ego, the death of your mind, of your separate identity.
Facing this death is scary. It’s scary to let yourself go completely into the unknown, to let yourself go completely into the present moment. In fact, by the term “union with the divine,” I’m indicating nothing other than union with the present moment.
Don’t Take Spirituality Lightly
It’s important to note that if a person starts an advanced spiritual path like Kundalini meditation, Kriya yoga, or any other meditation technique without understanding what spirituality is really about, they might find themselves experiencing states of union without comprehending what’s happening. It’s normal that they might get a bit scared in this situation.
This is why it’s vitally important not to take spirituality lightly. Don’t treat these spiritual techniques casually, because if you meditate consistently, you will come to experience a state of union.
The Superficiality of Spiritual Discourse
On social media, I notice extreme superficiality when it comes to discussing spirituality. Spirituality is union with the divine. The highest goal, the noblest objective of any spiritual practice is union with the divine. If you implement spiritual practices, and have no idea what you’re about to face, it’s clear that you’ll feel fear, that you’ll be disoriented, that you might experience panic.
The Importance of Conceptual Understanding
This is why it’s important to understand, at least at a conceptual level, what the death of the ego is. If you know that after the death of your separate self, there’s nothing but love, nothing but union, if you trust the accounts of spiritual seekers who came before you, you could face this fateful moment much more calmly.
Of course, hearing a description is one thing, and then finding yourself there, really having to let go, is another. However, just knowing what it’s about, will infinitely help you in letting go and discovering what the term “union” means, in discovering what the present moment really is and what the term “truth” really indicates.
The Fear of Ego Death
During meditation, if you have no idea what a state of union is, it’s completely normal to feel fear or even experience a panic attack. The sensation you feel when you have the possibility to let go completely is the sensation of actual death. You have the feeling that you’re about to die.
And it’s clear that once you’ve accepted the possibility of dying, the possibility of letting go completely, you’ll discover that after this conceptual death, there’s nothing but divine love waiting for you, nothing but union with the present moment.
Embracing the Unknown: A Leap of Faith
However, there’s no other way to overcome this fear except to face it head-on, to demonstrate a true act of faith. Faith in a higher force, as Yoda would say to Luke Skywalker. You must trust in something superior, something that goes beyond materiality, beyond everyday life. You must put your life in the hands of the unknown and trust that the unknown will save you, trust that after the death of your ego there will be salvation, there will be love, there will be the divine.
Your first experience of union with the present moment will last very little, maybe a few minutes or even a few hours, and then you’ll return to your normal state. So don’t be impressed, don’t think this state of union is something extraordinary. This state doesn’t last for days or weeks the first times you experience it. It’s a state that lasts at most a few hours, and then you’ll return to your previous identity, to your everyday identity.
Conclusion
There are two main reasons why you might experience fear during meditation. The first reason is simply that during meditation, you have the opportunity to let go of emotions that you normally tend to suppress. The second reason is that when you’re approaching union with the present moment, it’s necessary for you to die conceptually to become one with reality.
If you understand what the death of the ego means, if you know what a state of union means, if you know that after the death of your separate self there’s nothing but love, if you trust the accounts of spiritual seekers who came before you, you could face this fateful moment, the moment of the death of the separate mind, in a much more equanimous, much calmer way.
Of course, hearing a description is one thing, and then finding yourself there, really having to let go, is another. However, just knowing what it’s about, just knowing what you’re experiencing, will infinitely help you in letting go and discovering what the term “union” means, in discovering what the present moment really is and what the term “truth” really indicates.