I don't really know, as you say I pull myself back and therefore I don't know what will happen.
What I was referring to as sinking mind was more the sensation I was going 'blank' that my brain would cease to function. That was not pleasant. I've heard others describe that as well for themselves. I rightly feared that sort of loss.
The other sort of fear I would say is more a sense of like having an entire Ocean ready to flood in on you and overwhelm you should you open the door just a little to it. You know it's wonderful and good, but you fear a loss of control, giving yourself to you and allowing yourself to fall into it. What often happens when you do open that door is such overwhelming Light and Love that you weap. It is a process of letting go of all you carry that weighs on you which you've learned to simply cope with an ignore its constant pressure in your life. That "letting go" is fearful because you've become attached to all that which is part of you, both good and bad. "Who will I be, if I don't have that," is a subconscious thought that holds us back.
On that note, a couple things. There are actually two things that happen in meditation. The first is meeting yourself. The second is meeting God, or the Infinite, or the transcendent, the yet unrealized Goal of your being in yourself. In order to adequately move into the latter, the former is no small thing. If we are subconsciously hanging on to stuff in our deep psyches we pushed out of our conscious awareness, it's precense in our lives is never fully released into the latter. It's not just surrendering what we know consciously. It's bring what is hidden in us to our own conscious awareness, own it, let it become consciously part of our awareness, and then take all of it and "let it go" into release. It is there where true transformation begins to happen. And that's what it's all about.
So you have the fear of letting go, and the fear of what's hiding in the dark in ourselves. People who say they don't experience fear in meditation, I wonder if they've truly opened those doors yet.
But the fear of something 'there' that wants to come in but we are holding back from it, that's your work. It's a sign of work for you. In time, you simply recognize it when it comes, and like hearing the sound of the doorbell, you recognize what it means and just open that door you've done many times before, and you're always safe on the other side. There are layers and layers of these doors you pass through, thinking each time you've arrived only to learn there's many more yet ahead.
Mental noise, do you mean thoughts or something else? Because it is common that there is a certain tinnitus-ish kind of sound. By the way, I assume it is sort of normal feeling pressure in your head, nose and so on? It can wander around a bit or spread.
I mean the constant chattering of our thoughts are brains are just running the texts over and over again all day long. This is normal life for people, and one they are completely unaware is happening until they actually stop and look inside and see that looping program buzzing along without a break. That's like the first thing you discover in meditation.
Possibly, I will admit and say I'm a bit unsure about what you mean by being grounded. But I would say there is a bit more awareness regarding certain things.
Being grounded is highly important and indispensable in meditation. By being grounded it means that the energies that are raised in your awareness are brought back into your body making you present in the moment in the world. Think of it like your mind being a kite up in the sky. Being grounded is attaching it to a string with it rooted on the earth to keep it from flying away and end up out of control eventually crashing to the ground.
In meditation, when you move beyond your normal moorings you attach yourself to you do become a bit like that kite going up the sky. There are some basic techniques to take that transcended space and bring it down into yourself in grounding. And to be honest, it is actually the grounding part of it which is the most powerful of all of it! Image you mind in heaven, and your feet planted on earth. It's is truly "incarnational" in that sense, where heaven and earth meet in you! I have much to say about this.
My approach depends when I do it really, although I guess there are some similarities overall. Sometimes I recite a prayer, like the Jesus prayer or hail Mary. I usually recite the prayer while simultaneously focus on my breathing or sensations of different kinds in my body, but often I give up on the words after some time and solely focus on breathing and sensations. At other times I don't use any prayers or words at all and go straight for focus on the breathing. Yesterday specifically was like the later example, with the exception of occasionally saying to myself ''feeling X is not you, X is something you experience.''
Centering prayer is focus on a certain word, correct? I have heard of it but I'm not that familiar with it.
Centering prayer, from what I understand of this, is a sort of hybrid meditation practice. The "prayer word" can be mantra-like, which is what reciting the Rosary in reality is. What the prayer word is from my understanding, is that as your mind drifts off, it's a touchstone sort of word to remind yourself to come back into meditation. It's like a type of mental conditioning, like Pavlov's dog salivating when it hears the bell. You say that word, or phrase, and it triggers a response of positioning yourself back in meditation. It's perfectly normal to come in and out of meditation many times during practice. There are other techniques that do the same sort of thing.
One last thing, is that there are two basic types of meditation, which are concentration meditation and insight meditation. I'd recommend you reading this for your awareness.
https://integrallife.com/integral-post/stages-meditation
