Before going for my Vipassana meditation course, I watched way too many videos on how a particular meditation, guru, or practice changed their lives. Listening to the experiences of people who went on a spiritual path, I can’t deny that I wasn’t influenced by how their lives had changed.

I had a notion in my mind that everything would automatically get better once I knew how to meditate and practice regularly. I was so wrong about my expectations, and this blog is all about the things only practicing Vipassana didn’t solve for me.

1. Practicing Vipassana Didn’t Erase My Imposter Syndrome.

When it comes to my talents, I have a giant imposter syndrome. I could trace this behavior back to my childhood; now, it has reached another level. I would skip submitting the necessary things within the deadline, thinking I needed to be better or my work needed to be more significant to be shared. I have lost many opportunities through this pattern.

Once, there was an article I wanted to share, which many people I met on my travels also wanted to read. I stressed about it and postponed it for 2 months after a lot of stress eating. It performed well and was highlighted in many places. Somewhere inside me, I still felt I didn’t deserve it, or it wasn’t good enough to be shared that wide— maybe I just got lucky that day.

Even after practicing meditation, I couldn’t overcome this problem. I finally had to realize there was an issue like this and actively take steps to get better at it. The first step was to start and do things without thinking much about the result or the failure.

I would say Vipassana helped me to curb those insecure feelings, knowing if I acknowledged the feeling, it would do its things and pass away, and I wouldn’t have to cave into eating and making things worse.

Only practicing Vipassana didn’t wash away my imposter syndrome, but it gave me a great tool to cope with it.

2. I Didn’t Gain Automatic High Energy From Meditation

Meditation and the flow of energy is one of the hot topics nowadays. Everyone is talking about vibrating at a higher frequency and improving their life.

I was at one of the lowest points in my life before going to meditation. I didn’t have clear expectations from meditation. Still, I expected to get a grip on life and have some elevated energy levels, both physically and mentally.

Listening to many teachers and their experiences about having higher powers and dramatic transformational stories, I believed I would encounter some higher being or something drastically changing my low-energy state in life.

When I say low state energy, I mean my poor life choices, my unhealthy body, my fatigue, the negative thoughts, and other mind-related things. But nothing of that sort happened. Everything remained the same, and I consciously had to keep it that way or make a change—I could be active or passive in my life patterns.

So, after practicing for a while, one day, I had enough and changed a few things in my life, which gave me some energy to get better at it and, in turn, change a few more things. It took active choices and actions to reach that stage. No supernatural intervention in visible ways.

I had to take strict action once I decided to improve my life. Add my imposter syndrome to it; it was more challenging. But the rewards were also pretty impressive. I’m also thankful to all the unknown forces that supported me in this journey.

3. I Didn’t Gain Any Clarity; I Was Lost in Many Ways.

I’ve been struggling with a lack of clarity in life for years now. I would say it was one of the reasons I wanted to go for a proper meditation technique—one out of many reasons. Clearly, I expected a few things to get clearer for me.

Which path to choose in my career?

Am I doing the right thing?

I was indeed confused and a bit lost in my life.

How can someone not have clarity on so many things? I needed clarification about whether to proceed with my content marketing or science career. I changed my career to content creation and then transitioned into digital marketing because of my passion for content creation and love to travel and work remotely.

However, this hasn’t been very fulfilling or satisfying so far. When it comes to science, I was about to go for PhD before I left all that and took up content creation. I was mostly into cancer research and drug delivery systems using nanomaterials. In one of my works, I figured it was more effective to live a healthy life by incorporating the natural elements available instead of extracting a few molecules to target one disease—usually due to an unnatural lifestyle. So, following the science route for the solutions wasn’t my best idea.

After traveling, working in different industries, and seeing other cultures, I was still deciding what to pursue. Nothing really matched my interests, and I had no interests. It was highly unclear to me which path to choose.

Call it my ego or high expectations, but I always felt I was not where I wanted to be.

When it comes to meditation, neither in my meditation course nor after practicing it did I get any clarity on most of the things I was searching for. In fact, I got more lost in life. I lost interest in many things, making me question the consequences of choosing a career in one industry. In fact, I couldn’t find anything 100 percent morally aligned with my perfection-biased intentions. I was also lost in many other areas, which led to an idle life!

I’ve written extensively about this phase of life in my blog about practicing Vipassana for a year.

This is not a rant about how useless meditation was; instead, I gained a lot of deep insights. Instead of gaining clarity, I was introduced to another way of looking at things. Another perspective. Instead of seeing things as right and wrong, I was open to seeing things as they are—more like, “It is what it is!”.

Maybe that was my key takeaway from the meditation course and practice. Things happen as a consequence of so many other things. The rest is what you make of it—the meaning, perceptions, and more.

4. Making Wise Decisions!

This was a very big one for me!

I always thought meditating would clear my head and show me a path to go ahead. A little expectation of getting wiser was also there. Wise people will make wise decisions, right?

But I was so wrong in this! All of it!

I believe or have proven from my past that I make poor decisions regarding my life choices. Impulsive plans, poor financial decisions, and wrong life choices have been a part of my life. This time around, I was hoping that would change. And it didn’t change much!

In fact, I made decisions following my past patterns, trying to escape reality by running away from it. There were times when I tried to deal with them head-on. But, the consequences were so extreme that I never expected situations to turn around so bad. I finally felt like getting a taste of adulthood problems and how things can go wrong, even out of kindness.

Well, one thing was different this time. Looking back, I don’t regret any of those decisions. All the tears, wrong choices, and impulsive moves, all of them worked around within a year. The people I thought I had lost forever became closer. My impulsive decisions made a lot of things better.

Yes, I made a lot of wrong decisions after meditating as well, and I don’t regret any of them today.

5. Meditation Didn’t Turn Around My Life Automatically.

For a long time, I thought practice was more important. I felt dedicating my time to sit down and practice meditation would automatically change everything for me. It took a while to come out of that and actually start living.

First, I researched further to get my life on track. To become healthy and not so depressed all the time. In my further research, I figured out that it was not just my mental state but my hormone-imbalanced body that was making me all lethargic. Combined with the autoimmune disorder, I had a polished playground for a miserable life.

So, I decided to stop everything else and focus on getting some energy to move around and be active in life. This is where I stopped my meditation practice and concentrated on researching ways to get healthy. Meditation came in handy in this process, and even though I stopped my regular practice, I didn’t give up.

I just focused on living and making life a meditative experience. And that has been working well for me.

More about that in the coming blogs. Before I end this blog, I want to tell you that this is not to discourage anyone from trying any meditation course. I just wanted to share my experience with meditation—more like my expectation vs reality.

I was someone who thought my life would turn upside down after the meditation course. People close to me also thought they’d lose me if I took that course. I want to tell you that this is not the case. Even though I gained a lot of knowledge and new perspectives, I didn’t lose my freedom to choose things in my life. Nor am I compelled to practice the technique. Everything sounded a bit scary until I tried it, and Vipassana was just another trial of the unknown. Something I would like to explore more at my own pace.

Topics #Meditation #one year of Vipassana meditation #vipassana mediation