Don,

Sometimes when we begin a meditation practice, we begin to see and feel just how unkempt our mind really is. This can be disroienting, scary, and produce a feeling of panic. Its fine, normal, and usual, and just breathing slowly helps it fade. After all, its just a feeling, just some chemicals in the body, and fades within a few minutes usually. The next morning when you were feeling weird, “calling up the same feeling” was perhaps unskillful. Much like if we burn our hand on a stove, the next day our hand feels weird, but we don’t go to the stove again for another round of sensations.

Consider looking into a local sangha for some help with meditation, there are often low cost or free classes, plus others with experience in working with the mind in that way. Buddha taught that the sangha was one of the pillars of development, much like one of the legs of a three legged stool. This doesn’t mean you have to go find a Buddhist temple, but it does help to have a community that you connect with, can rely on, and bounce ideas off of. Tinybuddha does a little of that, but if you’re peeling away layers of your mind, it may help a lot to connect more directly with like minded people.

Finally, consider spending a little time doing metta meditation. Peeling back layers can be disorienting if you’re not also helping the mind become more smooth. When we spend time wishing for happiness for ourselves and others (the root of metta practice), the mind becomes more peaceful. This helps a lot when we are doing breath meditation, because the ripples in the mind become less distracting, less potent, and relax. Much like a hot tub can increase the blood flow to our muscles, so when we are on the massage table, the knots work out with less trouble, less pain… metta helps the space open up in the mind, so the ripples settle without panic.

With warmth,
Matt