The Intermediate
The Intermediate meditator is much easier to distinguish because there’s a confidence and consistency that has been developed in their practice. There may even be some exciting meditative phenomena beginning to happen!
If this is you, your practice is definitely more established than it used to be. You make time to meditate, and do so fairly consistently. You're not just meditating for 10-15 minutes. You're going through your process, working with distractions, letting your mind settle properly, and putting in some real effort.
Sometimes meditation might feel wonderful, easy, and like it just clicked into place effortlessly, but other times you might find yourself having to "knuckle down" more. This can pose some unique challenges with the quality of your meditation.
On the "good days" exciting meditative phenomena are likely to show up as a result of skillful practice! This will vary from person to person, but sudden jolts of mental clarity and effortlessness, brightness, lights, energy sensations, and pleasant feelings are all common examples reported at this stage.
You're also going to start tapping into very uplifting mind states that will bring inner happiness, contentment, creativity, and clearer access to your intuition. It's at this phase that people really start to feel like their practice is taking off!
If you haven’t felt any of these yet, it doesn’t mean you’re not an intermediate. But it’s not uncommon to show up as you near this stage of practice, so it’s worth noting.
As a whole, The Intermediate has come a long way from where they began. They have a clearly established practice. But they have a whole range of experiences within their practice that makes it hard to know how to continue.