What matters is that you meditate, you're seeking enlightenment, you're on the pathway to enlightenment, and you're having fun. Don't look for reassurance in the eyes of others. Look for reassurance in your own eyes. Only you know if Buddhist practice is improving the quality of your life.

The astral dimensions afford you opportunities to have experiences and gain insights into the structural nature of how dimensions are made up and phased together.

When you can successfully stop thought for longer periods of time, you do move into other worlds. This can also happen in the very beginning, if a person meditates with someone who is very advanced.

There is a large difference between spacing out in the lower occult astral planes, weird, junky, fuzzy energy, and meditation. Meditation is sharp, clear, precise, perfect, luminous, shiny, happy, etheric, cosmic, and dissolute.

Initially there's absolutely nothing.

You did something noble. This will cause a release of energy. It causes a vibratory shift. It means you are moving into a different plateau of consciousness.

Start a meditation session by repeating a mantra, perhaps, "Aum", which is the most powerful of all mantras. Then, after repeating the mantra perhaps a dozen times, focus on a yantra.