I started getting into meditation a few years ago after realizing the reason the world felt less 'real' than it used to was because I could never 'get out of my

I started getting into meditation a few years ago after realizing the reason the world felt less 'real' than it used to was because I could never 'get out of my head' and have more direct interactions with external things. (For example, I finally went to Tokyo and moved to San Francisco and the difference each made was pretty minor—like looking at high res photos on the internet; it was a stark contrast to when I visited NYC seven years prior and was blown away just walking around. ) It soon became my number one priority after also realizing that all the times I remembered really enjoying myself, I was in that 'out of my head' state (you have a much better sense of presence, the 3Dness of things is much more apparent, smells, tastes, interpersonal interactions are all way richer). Anyway, I decided to make a wide survey of meditation resources from old religious texts to modern neuroscience inspired teaching, to a number of things in between. The first source that really made things click for me was watching some of the youtube videos from Ajahn Brahm. He's English, but trained as a monk in Thailand for many years, and has a background in physics. I think it's a combination that makes him pretty well-suited to explaining these concepts to techy Westerners. He's also got a light, humorous style to his lecturing, so it's easy to watch (if a bit cringeworthy [due to corniness] at times. And you'll get an occasionally bit of religiosity [he is a monk after all], but he mostly keeps it out.) I'd recommend this one for starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw2mHpVv9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw2mHpVv9A I also found bits of Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Full Catastrophe Living" to be very helpful in the early stages (it focuses on another form of meditation called 'body scan' which has some unique benefits, and can be easier for beginners. It's often the choice of style when teaching for therapeutic purposes). Edit: I'll also add the way I see meditation instruction fitting into the practice: there aren't that many concepts, but each has extraordinary depth, so you just have to keep revisiting regularly; you'll often find that if you've improved in your practice, you can go back and see the same old lecture and interpret it totally differently, even though it made a kind of sense the first time. You'd think you wouldn't need to be told, e.g., "just allow your thoughts to arise and disappear on their own" like a hundred times, in different ways—but you probably do :)