As a brief note about meditation, over the last few years people have written more about some potential negative side effects of meditation. I haven’t experienced those, but over the last two years I have experienced hallucinations when I wake up during the middle of the night. A sleep specialist told me the name for this, but I can’t remember it now.
As an example, two nights ago — the evening and morning of 8/20 to 8/21/21 — I woke up and looked across the room, and in an area where there is a hallway that leads to the bathroom (and laundry area), I saw a disembodied head that looked like Princess Diana. Two years ago that would have been pretty freaky, but now things like this are a common occurrence.
This experience only became freaky when she began to move her eyes. It was like her head was frozen, protruding out from the laundry area into the hallway, and then her eyes began to move and look around, like, “Holy crap, where am I, and why can’t I move my head?!” That reminded me of an old Don Knotts movie where he’s in a haunted house, and it was indeed freaky.
UPDATE: I’m reminded that I wrote about the name for this phenomenon before in Sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations, and hypnopompic hallucinations, and the name for these specific experiences is hypnopompic hallucinations.
