When you already have the habit of meditating, you may «see things» when you are meditating, if that happens, several questions may arise, in this article I address the ones that my clients and meditation students have asked me the most. I hope they are useful to you.
What does it mean to see things?
Nothing special. You will produce mental objects until you leave Earth, those mental objects may or may not sneak into your meditation sessions. Your mind produces mental objects through contact with other beings, experiences, objects and with other mental formations. In other words, what you «see» when meditating may be the product of the free creative play of your mind using elements that it has in itself. or you may be perceiving a response to a stimulus you received. You can receive very different stimuli: emotional, energetic, mental, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory.
If your meditation consists of visualizing something in particular, it is a completely different area, in this case I am talking about just sitting down to breathe, calm your mind and contemplate what arises in it.
Is it okay for me to see things when I meditate?
Personally, I prefer to approach the matter from the perspective of useful vs useless instead good or bad. From this point of view, if the vision I had during my meditation brings me some kind of knowledge or triggers harmony within me or places me in a state of well-being (physical-mental, emotional, or energetic) then it is useful and I integrate it into my experience, if it does not contribute any of that then it is useless and I discard it.
What do the things I see when meditating mean?
It depends on whether you have a spiritual «court» to play on. For example, we are going to think that when meditating I see colors, as if they were dripping or moving oil stains on a neutral background, if I am involved in Buddhist matters then it is easy for me to identify the colors I see with Mandalas, knowing more about Mandalas will help me I could help wring wisdom out of my vision, if I wish, of course. Same example of the colors, but now thinking that I work with Angels, then I can perceive those colors as Angelic Energies. Knowing more about Angels and the colors of their energies could help me give coherence to my vision and make it useful.
If you do not have a spiritual field, then you can approach your vision or visions as the free play of your mind using elements that it has in itself and/or as the process of integrating things that you have lived into the totality of your experience, that process is Your brain does it whether you ask it to or not and it can do it through a wide variety of resources such as colors, sensations, and thoughts.
What do I do with those things?
My suggestion is to integrate them into your experience or discard them, as I mentioned above.
For that I use these questions:
1. Do I perceive the vision as something pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? This is just to make you aware of it, not to be the criteria for ruling out the vision.
2. Does the vision resemble something I have seen before in the physical world or in my inner world? If the answer is No, go to the next question. If the answer is Yes, then ask yourself, what effect does that thing/experience/being have on me? Do I learn something when I am in contact with that thing/experience/being? Can I find more information to understand better? By answering these questions, you can integrate the insight and knowledge you gain into your life experience.
3. Does the vision bring wisdom in any way or does it generate harmony in my inner world? If the answer is No, then discard the vision, if the answer is Yes, take a physical or mental note of what you learned and integrate it into your experience.
From my perspective, what is really important is to do that work of analysis and scrutiny on what we «see» when meditating, not the vision itself. It is useless to see something extremely beautiful and interesting if we do not get some wisdom from the experience and the same with something that can be strange or cause us some discomfort, if we do not analyze it we will be left with the discomfort, nothing else, if we analyze it we will be able to better understand our reaction to what we saw and learn something in the process.
To close, I suggest that if you have a teacher or guru, ask him openly about what you «see» when meditating, surely he can shed some light on it.
If you don’t have a guru, nothing happens, apply the suggestions in this article with great equanimity and you will find the answers for yourself.