tried to meditate last night

[BrownEye]

You could visualize protection before meditating... like being surrounded with white light, coming directly from the creator. Or say a little prayer and ask for protection during your meditation.

Meerie is right.

I went through the exact same thing with my first try. I had a presence show up to my left, then one to my right. What I found out later is that I was crossing over to the astral, even though I was not aware of it. I did not know until I had already brought back an astral entity trying to attach itself to me. I think it was my 3rd try that I had what felt like someone rubbing their thumb across my left temple, kind of pushing/wipng. While these things were interesting, I was not sure what they were.

You do need to create a shielding program, which is super simple, and you just need to overcome the "disbelief" that is in your way of accomplishing it. It is as simple as imagining another layer of "skin" about an inch or two outward of your real skin, and filling that skin with the color/frequency/vibration/aura of your choosing, programming that layer to be a type of firewall that is porous allowing only the frequencies of love through the pores. You can program this like "all negative frequencies cannot pass through this shield" or whatever sounds good to you. A command line such as "activate" can be used to start the program before you undertake anything. You can use the program any time you wish by just saying/thinking the word.

Programs are super simple, in the exact way that a hypnotist would do. I would recommend that you look into books on hypnotism as a way to understand how to connect to your subconscious and understand how to work with it and modify it.