Meditation

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This topic has 12 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 3 months ago by Diarmaid.

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August 22, 2017 at 4:02 pm #165198

Cruzzie
Participant

I started meditating to help with my depresssion and recent crisis and it’s been, well…interesting. I’ve been doing if for a little under 2 months daily, occasionally I’ll skip a day (recently I’ve skipped several days) but it’s been pretty consistent. I started off with 10 mins a day and now I do anywhere from 20-40 minutes a day. I’ve become extremely sensitive lately…sometimes I get extremely sad, almost downright depressed. In meditation I experience a lot of emotions and sensations. Some sessions are amazing and others are so awful I start crying either during or immediately after (sometimes for long periods). I feel myself changing but idk if it’s good. Sometimes I get so scared and anxious, not that I didn’t before, but it seems like it happening quicker, for no particular reason, and like a wave that crashes over me. I feel like sometimes I’m going crazy. Closest thing I can describe it as is being extremely hormonal right before a menstrual cycle. But it’s all the time now, or at least frequently. I really vulnerable and all over the place. So many things are happening in my life as well, like big changes and I just feel overwhelmed. I wondering if the meditation is just making it worse sometimes??

August 22, 2017 at 6:29 pm #165202

Diarmaid
Participant

As someone who has meditated for 2 years anywhere from 1-5hrs/day, (so still a newbie), I always go to Pema Chodron when I am confused and she would say this: Why do we meditate? we do not meditate to feel good (shockwaves) if the purpose of meditation was to feel good, most of us would feel we were doing it wrong most of the time!! The purpose it not to feel bad, however, you’ll be glad to know, but rather an open, attentive, compassionate attitude to whatever is going on. Like a big sky, allowing alot of room, for anything to arise, dwell and pass away. Good and comfortable and pleasing and difficult, painful and unwanted, all of this… So the essence is training in something pretty radical and not the habitual pattern of the species, and that is to stay with ourselves no matter what is happening, without putting on top of it good and bad, right and wrong, pure and impure. So if meditation was about just about feeling good, I think all of us secretly hope that is what it is about!! Therefore a very common experience of the meditator is in a typical day when your feeling bored, restless, when your mind is hurting, you feel like you must be doing it wrong, because it is a difficult experience, so that is the main thing to keep in mind!! It is not about feeling good it is about a compassionate openness, or an ability to be with oneself and one’s situation through all kinds of experience. So whatever life presents you with, you are open to that and this is pretty radical!! To this I would add it sounds like you came to meditation with the goal that it would help with your depression, there are no goals in meditation, it is what it is. So to ask is this good or bad is dualistic thinking, and a form of judging, because of your goal…. I know this was deep, but I hope it helps, my advice is stick with it, it takes a lot of courage to spend time with oneself!!!! Good Luck!

August 23, 2017 at 5:47 am #165226

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Cruzzie:

You wrote that you feel these things when you meditate: “extremely sad, almost downright depressed… so scared and anxious… quicker, for no particular reason, and like a wave that crashes over me. I feel like sometimes I’m going crazy.”

And you are “wondering if the meditation is just making it worse sometimes??”

Meditation leads to more awareness, more awakened awareness to your feelings, so it is a different experience of feelings. It is different to experience anxiety without awareness than it is to experience anxiety with awareness. In the first case, it feels bad but you do your best to not notice, to distract, to take a break from the anxiety in one way or another. In the second case, it feels bad and you don’t distract, so there it is, the fear.

My experience with mindfulness, the ongoing meditation form, ongoing awareness, is that my feelings, over time, are less overwhelming and I am less reactive to them. Anxiety is still unpleasant and I have been unable, so far, to experience anxiety without judgment- it is an experience I want to avoid, don’t want to feel it. I don’t know if it is possible to feel it and not dislike feeling it. I need to pay more attention to it, to how it feels and stay with it, more than before.

anita

August 23, 2017 at 10:00 am #165300

Humanoid
Participant

Dear Cruzzie, to build on the great advice above, let me simply recommend the book Joyful Wisdom by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Not only does it include fantastic guidance on meditating, but his stories surrounding his own journey struggling with meditation will be a great help to you.

Also check him out on YouTube. ( He has many videos) He has a wonderful manner and his voice never fails to raise a smile, which in itself is a powerful tonic when we have had a bad day. You can find him here https://youtu.be/5GSeWdjyr1c

One small piece of advice from me. Whilst meditating try learn to simply be the observer of your thoughts and feelings. With practise you can watch both good and bad thoughts and feelings come and go with some detachment. Eventually you see it’s just part of your brain generating all this nonsense and you can look on without any attachment. Eventually these thoughts and feelings just fade away into the background and your mind becomes a tool to be used when necessary, not something that needs to be going “blah blah blah” all day and taken so seriously.

Good luck

August 23, 2017 at 1:21 pm #165332

PearceHawk
Participant

Hi Cruzzie good to see you…

I sometimes feel the same as you do and I find it to be puzzling at the least. What Diarmaid and Anita offer makes sense so I need to come to a better understanding of what is going on with me as it is to you.

I am really sorry for not being able to offer anything useful to you that you are looking for, but I will continue my search for answers for you, and myself as well.

With peace and love,

Pearce

August 23, 2017 at 4:10 pm #165354

Cruzzie
Participant

Thank you. I definitely feel different. I’ve felt a lot of feelings that I don’t think I’ve experienced in this (new, I guess you could call it ) way in my entire life…not just with the meditation but because of all dramatic shifts in my life too. I just feel different, almost like I’ve woken up for the first time in my life. It is all very confusing and scary, and not knowing what I want or what I want to do next in unnerving. Its like I’m meeting the real me for the first time if that makes sense?? There have been a lot extreme lows and aha moments. I’m starting to learn about acceptance and resistance. And fear, jeez…might as well be my best friend. I don’t know that I expected meditation to make me feel better necessarily but I’m not sure if it’s just making me more aware of a lot of buried sadness & pain. I guess I’m wondering is this normal?? to feel raw and over time become familiar with the emotions enough to be able to observe them without reacting so strongly or getting overwhelmed & stuck in them. I just don’t know A LOT and like all things in my life I’m probably overthinking this too…*sigh**

August 23, 2017 at 4:20 pm #165358

Cruzzie
Participant

Anita (the wise one)

Thank you again. I feel better just knowing you reply to anything I post because you offer the best advice. You said that awful word, FEAR. I can tell you I definitely feel a lot of that. I’m just a mess sometimes and I think to myself “why can’t I get this life thing right?” Meditation is helping me look at things differently by facing a lot feeling…the unpleasant ones. I’m just scared. I don’t know how else to describe this.

August 23, 2017 at 4:31 pm #165360

Cruzzie
Participant

Humanoid,

Thank you. I will check out the videos. And I feel like “blah blah blah” is an understatement of my mind! I know the meditation will help and has helped, which is why I’ve stuck with it. I’m just afraid…you know? Its new, the feelings are unpleasant.

August 23, 2017 at 4:34 pm #165362

Cruzzie
Participant

Pearce,

I appreciate the response either way. You have offered great advice and insight previously so thank you for that. Have a good evening.

August 23, 2017 at 8:58 pm #165394

Diarmaid
Participant

Hey Cruzzie,

I think you are very insightful and doing some serious investigation! Often people who have suffered a lot in life are drawn to meditation and really stick with it because life has provided a rude awakening, and that sounds like what is happening for you, it is called shunyata, or emptiness, groundlessness, or feels like the rug has been pulled out from under you. While it is very scary, and unnerving, it could also be the beginning of a beautiful relationship with yourself, loving and accepting yourself for everything you are with unconditional friendliness and steadfast loyalty no matter what. Initially meditation will make you aware of buried sadness and pain. This pain has always been there but because of the noise in your life/head, (and not being still) it could not be heard or truly felt, but it has been trying to be heard and it would have been showing up (sideways) in your life whether you noticed it or not… So the crying may be healing and cleansing, that needs to take place, but the good news is it is healthy. So initially meditation can bring a lot of confusion and can feel claustrophobic, but this slowly turns into more clear seeing and spaciousness.

I like that you said fear might as well be your best friend. How would you treat your best friend? Would you smile at them and welcome them in, ask them how they are doing today, offer them a drink, make them comfortable? As you move closer to yourself you are going to experience raw feeling and emotions for sure, but here, the instruction is to drop the story line and stay with the breathe or energy. Remember emotions are just energy we attach a story line to, without the story line the emotion can only last 1min 30s in the body. Try to stay at the pre-verbal level, what is going on there? You may find anxious feeling are actually excitement misinterpreted….

While I was reading this it immediately reminded me of Rumi, who puts it so beautifully:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,

August 24, 2017 at 12:34 pm #165500

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Cruzzie:

Thank you, I do like “the wise one”, brings a smile to my face as I type this.

You wrote: “I’m just scared. I don’t know how else to describe this”- this is as honest a statement as can be. I am scared too. I’ve been scared since I was a child and that is fifty years of scared. Being scared is the most unpleasant, most uncomfortable feeling I know. I tried to avoid it any way possible. I resisted it any which way I could, automatically, from restricting my inhaling and exhaling, holding my breath (still doing it), to performing simple and elaborate OCD rituals to neutralize it (way less now), to over-eating, over-dieting, over exercising, over- over… rushing, distracting any which way. My many tics, over a lifetime (Tourette Syndrome) is my muscles rushing, rushing to escape this experience of fear.

And yet, I did not escape fear. Unfortunately, it seems more and more that indeed there is no way over it but through it. I am still resisting it as I type this, still holding my breath. At times I am calm, but with physical discomfort, challenges, worries about other people, there is the fear again.

Oh, I do wish I could say that I mastered fear. I wish it was so. But it is not.

I wrote that it seems that there is no way over it but through it. “It seems” because I am still afraid, so how do I know if there is a way at all to be over it. We don’t know what we didn’t yet experience, over time.

There is nothing, I believe, that you can read, or that I can read, that will take fear away. I have faith that through a process, one I already started, one you did as well, we can stop being so afraid of feeling afraid.

It is a personal process, highly personal. Nothing will convince me that I can stop being afraid, or as afraid, except for my own tangible, core experience. To get that experience, I have to experience it.

I hope you post again. This is an amazingly relevant thread for me.

anita

August 29, 2017 at 11:14 pm #166176

Cruzzie
Participant

Diarmaid,

That was so beautiful, thank you for sharing that with me. I’m not used to seeing negative emotions as something that is or can be “positive.”Sometimes I come out of meditation and my underlying mood is worse and I cry, and I don’t mean a few tears, it is like the my dog just died sobbing type of crying. I do feel release afterwards but the moods linger sometimes too. Sometimes I’ll go to sleep afterwards because I feel emotionally drained or I’ll just feel numb or spaced out. I just don’t know if it is progress. It could just be that I can’t see how this can be progress either, coming from the prospective of someone who has been depressed for a lot of their life. Very strange happenings.

I went to a meditation center this past weekend, and I bought some books. The more I read and learn about meditation and spiritual practice the more I feel kind of overwhelmed and I don’t want to say “ashamed” but I suppose I see a lot of my faults and it sucks! Some of the concepts of Buddhism are very hard to swallow.

Again, thank you for taking the time to reply. I appreciate your kindness, it has helped me.

September 3, 2017 at 5:46 pm #166808

Diarmaid
Participant

Cruzzie,

You are welcome, happy to help! It really sounds like you are going through a lot of emotional uncertainty right now, maybe speaking to a counselor would be helpful for you. A few things to keep in mind: meditation is a journey. It can be about learning to love yourself, to let go of shame and accept your true self, to forgive yourself. We can treat ourselves quite unkindly and meditation illuminates this, but only by seeing this, can we begin to change, so here the practice is to rejoice that you have the insight to see where you are doing something you don’t like, rather than add additional suffering by criticizing, shaming or blaming. Sometimes it can be helpful to remember what a good friend, boss, or co-worker would say about us to keep things in perspective.

What I would encourage right now is for you to remember that you always have choices, and you are choosing to meditate, and to get meditation books (which I am happy to hear!) So it may be helpful to ask yourself why you are meditating. Is it because you love yourself enough and believe you are worth it? Is it because you want to enjoy life rather than survive it? Is it because you believe it is possible to live a meaningful life with considerably less depression? Have you felt hopeful rather than hopeless? When you know why, then you can remind yourself of these reasons to empower yourself.

For progress, it would depend how you define it (and this is the goal/expectation I was referring to in my first response). From my perspective you are willing to spend time with yourself, which takes a lot of courage, which you are also cultivating. You are persisting even though it hasn’t been easy and have even decided to take initiative and buy books to further educate yourself! You are becoming honest with yourself and asking important questions, to me, how could this not be progress? Ultimately, later on, when you feel ready, it will be helpful to let go of this idea of progress, when the time comes……

Trust the process you are doing great! Good luck!

September 10, 2017 at 9:01 am #168090

Alison Ledbetter
Participant

There is peace inside of you. It a tangible place of calm. All of the emotions that are surfacing are old, stuck emotional patterns that are surfacing to be healed. You can move through them without engaging them. Let them pass through like a wave and you will find your center. You have a core of peace and love. One way to connect to your truth is to say, “I love who I am.” This phrase can help you observe the emotions while letting them pass through and not engage them.

Blessings,

Alison
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