My own experience. I started out with meditation after reading how it was integral in hindu philosophy. I subscribed to the 'think nothing' path of meditation.

My own experience. I started out with meditation after reading how it was integral in hindu philosophy. I subscribed to the 'think nothing' path of meditation. The focus on your breath or on an 'Om' chant is just a pathway to get to that state of mindfulness. As background, I consider myself as someone who has a decent amount of control over my mind (It's probably just my ego). However when I tried to start thinking nothing, I found it incredibly hard to do. I try to suppress all the thoughts in my mind and actually think nothing, something keeps creeping in. After a few weeks of practice I began to get there, actively suppressing my conscious thoughts for a few minutes at a time. That's when the senses hypersensitivity began to kick in. I began to hear every bird, every small sound and every smell in the vicinity. I meditate outside so sometimes I'd feel a small ant crawling near my arm, or a small insect sit on my neck. Since I had my eyes closed, visual stimuli were technically already blocked out, but I still sometimes saw phantom images or these fractal patterns from the light leaking through my eyelids. Suppressing these and stopping thinking about these were another level of effort that took weeks. One other thing I noticed is how time sort of lost meaning. Sometimes I'd stop meditating to find that 25 minutes had passed, sometimes I'd find I barely did 7. I'm by no means any expert at doing this for myself. Everytime I had a break and stopped meditating for a few days or weeks (when I was on vacation or such), it took weeks to get back to the state I was. If I meditate for like 25 minutes, it's like only 12-14 minutes I'm really in the deepest state. The rest of the time I'm trying to get back there since something has distracted me. I honestly don't know what it does for me. I do feel next level refreshed after a longish session, even better than the best sleep ever. Honestly, the thing that keeps me going on this is my ego that I can't even control my own mind. I actually try to ignore all commercial forms of meditation training and try out stuff on my own. That way I don't really have the need to validate it as a 'scam' or as 'worthy'. Just my personal 2 cents.