How long have you been practicing meditation

Ten years I read a book and started meditating based on what I understood the book to say. Only in the last 2 and a half years I had a decent teacher. I follow the framework laid out by Danis Bois who these days calls his method perceptive pedagogy.

What altered states have you experienced? Could you describe them in detail?

Those aren't good questions to answer, because I don't know how you will understand the words I write well enough:

To get back to what DavidM wrote:

The distortions these processes produce are so severe that, without training, it is unlikely that one will even be able to conceptualize what they are, or what it would mean for the assertion that one's cognitive processes are distorted in this particular way to be true or false.

A year and a half ago a teacher spoke about how one can feel present and how one can feel that one exists. I asked for the difference between feeling present and feeling that one exists. The answer that I got was, that I probably never strongly felt that I exist and therefore at this time there no way to tell me the difference.

What do you think of DavidM's post? Do the four states of consciousness he mentioned seem familiar to you? How much truth do you think there is to his articles?

I do agree with stage one. I would also recommend a beginner to focus on the breath and to feel it in the belly.

As far as stage two goes, I understand what he's talking about but I'm personally more interested into things that much slower.