Ask HN: What was the turning point in your meditation journey?

It's difficult to answer this question in the abstract because "meditation" as a descriptor is about as general as "exercise." Even at the level of philosophical schools there's secular mindfulness meditation, Christian meditation, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and the like. Or at the level of technique there's visualization, mantra, vipassana, shamatha, jhana (which can be seen as part of shamatha), chakra, kundalini, ...

So a first turning point might be to discover why you're meditating: whether it's for curiosity, to lessen your suffering, to make yourself stronger, to answer your deepest questions, to help and serve others, to seek some kind of transcendence, to be a better person, or for any other number of reasons.

But let's suppose you're meditating to enact some kind of change in your day-to-day experience. Then a second turning point might be to realize that your conditioning is running the show. If you accept the idea that your starting point is one of ignorance and neuroticism, then if you practice alone, that same ignorance and neuroticism is running the show. This is why Buddhist systems emphasize the importance of buddha (here meaning the awakened teacher) and sangha (here meaning the community of aspirants).

Then if you continue this, a third turning point might be that there is no separation between formal and informal practice. This doesn't mean you stop formal practice; it means you treat all activity as part of the meditation and act with mindfulness and attention wherever you go. This is possible with a deep foundation in practice or with substantial lifestyle changes (such as avoiding distracting media), but usually it's easiest to sustain in a retreat setting.

But to put it in a sentence, I think the most important thing is to get real with your practice and build relationships with fellow meditators. Left to your own, there are too many traps that can waste a lot of time.

Reading The Mind Illuminated by John Yates (Culadasa). It's the first (and possibly only) book which gives a systematic step by step guide to reaching enlightenment. It explains things in a clear objective scientific way without any reference to religion.

For me meditation has always been on again and off again.

I discovered shapeshifting circa 2008, did it pretty seriously for a while then fell out of it.

I received a new and very powerful form a few months ago and received the strongest one yet a few weeks ago. For a while I didn't like the new form but found it was almost visualizing me as opposed to the other way around. It always drives 5 mph below the speed limit and gets honked at. The other day I went into an interaction I was worried about and told it to not come out no matter what, but with what went down I should have visualized it before going in.

Technically, the most revealing experience has been to lie absolutely still, eyes half-open, not even blinking, staring at a fixed point in a static, blank scene such as a wall while following each seeing/hearing sense-impulse’s travel through the nervous system to the point where the different signals meet.

This eventually leads to strong open-eye visuals and complete oceanic boundlessness out-of-body experience.

Three key things:

* viewing a session as a vacation of the mind and giving yourself permission to let go of pressing life matters for a bit

* reframing thoughts like "how much time is left?" as being part of the passing mental landscape which can be noted and let go

* realizing there are stages in a session, ie settling, concentrating, spreading awareness, watching and such.

The idea that every session would be interesting in some way. If done right, it shouldn't be a mindless chore.

I switched from Headspace to Waking Up. Sam Harris's app goes much deeper into what the "self" is / consciousness etc. That deeper understanding of the theory helped me in terms of motivation and really committing to my practice every day.

I've only been doing it for about 20 days, so no turning points yet. Curious about other responses to this question.