A beginner’s experiences

[MattisF]

I am new to meditation and relatively new to spiritualism in general. I recently had a mental breakdown at the realisation of death, and was recommended to bring myself towards the spiritual teachings of eternal oneness with the universe’s stream of consciousness. I do find great sense in the teaching that only physical matter can cease to exist, while the metaphysical being is indestructible. After all, energy can’t be destroyed, only change structure.

So far, I am having beautiful experiences from guided meditation sessions. However, a few of them made me wonder whether my reactions are normal or not. The other night, my meditation guide called for my spirit guides, to which I had a strange physical response. It was almost as if something entered me through my open mouth. I had to swallow strongly, completely out of nowhere; it even took me by surprise, so it cannot have been an active decision of mind. Directly afterwards, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace, love and warmth fill my entire body. At this point, I lost my sense of time and space, and had a hard time figuring whether I was awake at all. Of course, I was.

After some time, the guide called for my spirit guide to show me something important about my life. What I saw, clear as day, was a sort of asymmetrical grid. It showed me photographs tied together by electric impulses. The snapshots were too far away for me to see what they were showing. At this point, my heart rate went up drastically. My heart was beating hard and fast, even though I wasn’t scared, nervous, startled or even particularly excited. I was within a state of total peace and oneness, and yet my heart was beating as fast as it does after a good run.

I decided to quit the session after this, and felt sort of uneasy, but not necessarily in a bad way. Just the sensation of not being alone, and the sensation of having been emptied from something. I’m a bit worried that my experiences were abnormal or harmful, since the heart did beat strangely fast and startled me completely. I also felt a spiritual presence, possibly even entering my body through my mouth. Are these experiences common or at least widely heard of within spiritual meditation? If so, should I ignore the physical reactions next time and let the spiritual presence guide me further down the stream?