Questioner (Q): How does one know that she is meditating rightly? Secondly, I know that one should not be dependent on others and one's happiness should always come from within. Yet, my emotions erupt and I react due to the actions of the other person. So, how to stay detached from everything and stay unshaken in any situation?
Acharya Prashant (AP): (referring to the first question) Life is the only and ultimate proof. If your meditation is right then your life will be right. And if your life is right then rest assured that knowingly, unknowingly, effortfully, effortlessly, you are meditating right.
Meditation the event, mediation the process is a means. It is meant to give you a glimpse of what freedom is like. That glimpse has to then be nurtured. One has to fall in love with that glimpse. One has to say that one loves it so much that it is needed in all hours of life. If that which comes to you in meditation does not remain with you continuously and throughout, then meditation is not only not successful but also dangerously counter-productive.
We will have to understand that the peace experienced during a process of meditation is dualistic peace. Because you remain stressed and restless and filled up with unexpressed energy. So, when a process of meditation, a method of meditation gives you relief from all that which is bothering you then you feel great. That relief, that apparent peace, that dualistic peace is experienced only because one is firstly full of stress. That is why there are several methods of meditation that firstly require you to be full of stress. They take you to a peak of stress and from there they release you. So a calming effect, a soothing peace is experienced. What is the difference between non-dual peace and dualistic peace? Non-dual peace has no opposite, non-dual peace does not come after and because of stress and tension. Non-dual peace does not leave you, you cannot experience it come and go. Dualistic peace is dependent on the experience of its opposite. Therefore, it is better called as relief rather than peace. So the two are greatly different.
