Meditation: How do you know if you’re doing it right? What should you feel?

Something I have recently realised as I progress with my meditation:

There is a major difference between intellectually understanding and actually just feeling/experiencing/knowing. It can’t even be put into words but best described as knowing.

I am writing this because I wish someone had explained this to me earlier on, just so that I knew that I didn’t really know yet.
I have also searched around before posting and couldn’t find anything that touched on this, so here goes.

Someone could logically and practically explain the science of it and you could intellectually understand it, but it doesn’t help. You have to just do it and actually know/experience/feel it to ‘get it’. And it takes time!

Personally, I started to intellectually understand things when listening to people talk about meditation/spirituality etc. Or reading books about it, what to do, how to practice, what you feel or the purpose, the goal etc. I understood it all intellectually, understood the science behind it based on research into neuroscience, physics, biology etc.

But as I practised I thought to myself, is this it, just understanding it? Do I get it? Just as much as the sages and gurus get it and feel it? Is my understanding of it what they are talking about as far as enlightenment?
I had been getting benefits from my practice such as reduced stress, better ideas, feeling happier etc. Is that all the benefits there are? Was I getting all there was to get?

I tried for months doing certain things in my practice that I had been instructed to do, I understood what they were getting at but was that it? Just to understand it?

And then in one morning practice, deep into a 45 min session, I felt it, experienced it, finally knew it, aha I ‘get it’. It wasn’t the final goal, but one of the ‘signals’ along the way as you progress through your practice, but I then knew the difference between intellectually understanding and actually ‘knowing’, and it only comes with practice.

I am by no means a master now, still training and on the way to transformation, but I’ve had a major shift and now all of the books, scriptures from sages and guided meditation from gurus all make sense in a completely different way. I don’t just understand it, I can feel it.

For anyone interested in some further reading to help with their meditation journey, I highly recommended listening to The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa (John Yates, PhD). It’s a practical guide to answer your question, how do I know if I’m doing this right?

If you have read this article and are thinking, what the hell is this guy talking about? What does this feel like to ‘know’? Here is a practical example.

You might have read books on meditation or been to a guided meditation session, use a meditation app and understand that there is no you, there is only consciousness and everything appears in consciousness.

You might have read books about physics and understand that everything that exists, is made of particles in an ever-expanding universe that we refer to as space and is the equivalent of consciousness.

You might have read about neuroscience and understand the brain is a complex system made of many sub-brain regions that all send signals that we receive in consciousness.

You might be doing your meditation and understanding all of this and think, yeah I get it, so what? I don’t feel any different, am I missing something here or what?

There is an exercise you might have tried called looking for yourself. You start your meditation and become aware of the feeling of sitting, aware of the noises you hear, aware of the thoughts popping in your head. Then you focus your attention on the breath, you open your eyes and look at an object or keep your eyes closed and imagine looking into someone’s eyes, you try and turn your attention on its self, look back at yourself from the objects point of view or through the other person’s eyes, look for the looker, look for the thing you refer to as ‘you’, where is it? What does it look like? What is it made of? Is it in the middle of your head?

You understand from your research that there is no looker, there is no you, there is just consciousness. So you’re doing the exercise and you’re not finding anything. You understand that there is no you, is that the point? Just to understand it? Because, yeah ok you get it, so what? But do you get it? You’re not sure so you keep doing the exercise, after months of doing this exercise in your practice you finally feel it. All you can see in your visual field is nothing, just pure consciousness, you look for yourself and there is nothing there anymore, no head that you could be in the middle of, no body, no nothing, just pure consciousness.

Then you re-read the books you’ve already read, re-listen to the scriptures from sages, instead of just understanding it intellectually, now you feel it, you know it.

This example is not at all the end goal, in fact, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a feeling like many others that you may experience in your meditation practice. Like the feeling of leaving your body and twisting back around, or seeing a pure bright light where your inner light fills your visual field. These things don’t mean anything other than you are progressing, and actually, you shouldn’t let it take over your attention in your practice as it’s a distraction from your attention on the breath.

The end goal from what I understand is a feeling or knowing of pure joy and appearance of great insights that occur not only in your meditation but in your daily life between meditation sessions.

You can’t get what this feels like, you can only understand it and when you get there, you will know. These other feelings and experiences along the way are signals that you are progressing, but you can’t let it distract you from your practice and you must continue for an unknown period of time. Just remember to keep going and you will know it when you feel it.

Hopefully, this is helpful to anyone who has been practising for months or maybe years and is wondering if they are doing it right, or if the benefit they are currently getting is all that there is.

Cheers!