This is a kind of followup of my post where I wrote about how meditation changed its nature after they found me a terminal cancer.
I've been reading a number of posts in this group (mostly from newbies) and it is easy to spot a common pattern.
I've been meditating for 25+ years, quite consistently, 20 minutes to 4 hours a day, participating in silent retreats and so on. I occasionally helped meditation with drugs, binaural sounds and whatever could make it deeper than usual. I also read all the possible great books that I could easily parrot upon need, looking wiser than I really was.
Fact is that I always found meditation dull, boring and uninteresting. I'm a curious guy, I need out of body experiences, angels with trumpets, light shows, encounters of the 3rd type with supernatural beings, but these exceptional events during meditation happened less than 10 times in 25 years.
Quite disappointing, isn't it?
So much effort for almost nothing!
Enough about myself. Back to the pattern I spot: it is the frequent question "I'm meditating. When am I supposed to enjoy meditation's effects?!?"
Meditation doesn't work like this. Special effects happen but they are not the rule (at least if you are not following the jhanas path: I would leave it to seasoned meditators that know what they are doing).
Meditation is water that slowly digs the rock, not the TNT that makes it explode.
It taught me to observe and detach myself from my thoughts, and this took time. Lot of time. I didn't wake up with this realisation: It was so slow building up that I cannot pinpoint a moment when it was there.
This detachment let me follow quite naturally the Awakening path, with the realisation of what I am and what life is.
This knowledge revealed to be of invaluable value a few months ago when they found a terminal cancer in my body. It is helping me to accept my fate without useless accusations against God's injustice.
Life is what it is. I am the one who won the lottery. Of course I would have preferred 1 million euro instead, but it was cancer. There is no choice but go on!
Now I close my eyes in any moment and, pain allowing, feel peace. Complete peace. It's the first time I don't set a timer for meditation but practice it whenever it happens and as long as I please. Even while writing you this post (yes, that's possible).
I'm grateful that chance brought me meditation, and that it worked so well even with its 25 years of boredom.
So I would say: stop asking yourself when the show is going to begin. It will, and it's very possible you will miss it when it does.
A cave explosion is spectacular and noticeable, while water digging the rock isn't.