Hello! I joined here to learn and ask questions, as it seems getting advice from more experienced people in meditation is a wise thing to do (rather than just reading or listening to podcasts, which is what I've been doing).
I'm 28 years old, I started meditating for the first time several weeks ago and now I'm in the process of solving a mystery from my childhood. (I'll explain that in another topic). I am not religious, though Buddhism and Hinduism does interest me quite a bit. I'm Agnostic when it comes to God or spirits. I'm a scientific person, but I also try to have an open mind about such things. I've never done any drugs though I've been reading a lot about them recently, like on the John-Hopkins psylocibin studies, one thing that got me interested in this in the first place. Fascinating studies/stories to listen to.
In spite of what I just said; I always thought meditation was just about relaxing, and forcing yourself to be calm and reducing stress in your life. Wasn't I wrong?
After meditating for several weeks I've gotten a few tastes (for better or for worse) of the... mind/life altering capabilities. Wow. I promptly realized I needed to take this more seriously and learn and research before just going about this willy-nilly.
Reading through some existing topics has already been helpful, so thank you!
As I'm very new to this and not a practitioner of any school of thought of religion, please excuse my ignorance and perhaps lack of appropriate language.
