james alexander ramos:
Hi ladies & gents,
I'm a newbie to the forum and was hoping someone can help me out. I've been meditating for several months now consistently, but before that on and off for a few years. Generally speaking when I'm meditating sometime about 30 minutes in when my concentration is steady my perception of things around me begins to dissolve. If you've ever fainted before the feeling is quite similar. I then panic and try to ground myself. As a newbie meditator I don't know if I'm doing it right or not. I tend to focus my attention as closely to my breath as possible, certainly not a wide awareness. Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated.
Best to you all,
James
My intuition is that you're doing great and should keep it up. In my view the 'panic' sensations are a defense mechanism of the mind that think it's 'dying' when it's really just finally coming to rest for a while. Imagine living your whole life without going to sleep, and then experiencing the process of starting to fall asleep. It would be very easy to confuse that with dying and go into panic.
I posted something similar about my concentration practice before I read this which may or may not be helpful to you, in a thread called "Is Concentration about forgetting and trusting".
Since you in your non-meditating state know perfectly well that nothing bad is going to happen and that you won't die from meditating, my suggestion would be to look at this as a very encouraging sign and see if you can relax into it (or investigate) next time it happens. Good luck and have fun!