My meditation has been suffering

[Enli10me]

Hi Friends,
For the past 4 months I have gone on a personal meditation retreat meditating for up to 8 hours a day on some days. I have been lucky t o have my life circumstances support that. Lately, my circumstances have been even better because I have finished school but I have not been able to meditate! I've been feeling so uneasy, my mind has been quite chattery and I've only been able to complete around 2 hours a day. This is a bit of a concern for me as I was really feeling like I was getting somewhere with my meditation. I worry about falling out completely. Meditation has been very life transforming to me but I still feel like I need much work. Does anyone have an idea as to what this could be all about? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks so much!

[GilesC]

Hi Enli10me and welcome to the Project Meditation community,

Ok, only you are going to know for sure, but let's see if this resonates with you...

You say "my circumstances have been even better because I have finished school". Is this because you feel that 'learning' was a hard task and you now feel free of it? If so, you have to recognise that life is constantly teaching us lessons even after we leave school. Some people choose to ignore those lessons, and perhaps feel they suffer as a result of that (not that they consciously know it), and some recognise 'lifes lessons', learn from them and allow them to help shape their life. I suspect that you have unconsciously connected the dedication to meditation practice, as a task of 'learning meditation', to the learning you were doing in school, and now that school has finished, you unconsciously feel you are stopping that learning, and hence the meditation 'learning' is also slowing.

The point is though that meditation is not something that requires hard work. It requires dedication to stick at it, yes, but if you are feeling it's hard work, then your perception of it is wrong. I would question why, at such an early stage of learning meditation, you feel there is a need to meditate for 8 hours at a time? Even 2 hours a day is a long period of meditation. Typically, just 20-30 minutes, twice a day is recognised as being beneficial to our lives. Spending 8 hours of a day in meditation, takes out so much of the day and stops us from 'living'. Meditation isn't intended to stop us from 'living' but to actually assist us in how we go about it.

Perhaps, if you are concerned about falling out of doing your meditation practice, you should jump to the other extreme than you would expect and actually just cut your practice down to two 20 minute sessions a day. This will give you the time to live and will still provide all the benefits of meditation. Later on, if you feel you wish to increase the time to 30 minutes, and then perhaps 40 minutes further on, then by all means that's your choice.

Only certain retreats and buddhist type practices of meditation seek to meditate for prolonged hours of the day, but to be honest, I'm not aware of any real additional benefit from doing that. Yes, I've heard that some people get a/some moments of realization from one-off practices of long meditation, but in truth, meditation is not about what you experience during the meditation but how it can be of benefit to you when you are not practicing and just 'living'.

So, just because you are 'only' meditating for 2 hours a day, this does not mean that you are not getting somewhere with meditation. It's not about how long you can meditate for, but about the benefits it gives.

May we ask what type of meditation you have been practicing, and how you were taught? And how long you have practiced medition for (is it just the 4 months)?

Hugs

Giles

[Enli10me]

Hi GilesC!
Thanks for your reply. The reason I said that my circumstances are better now is because I have more time. I really enjoyed the learning in school! I was studying Religion, specializing in eastern religions so it was very supplementary to my meditation practice. Now I'm reading a lot on Yoga and Hinduism and have picked up Yoga practice again.

what you say is so true and I agree with it completely! I have however been on a path to reaching a deeper level of realization. I feel like I need a lot of work on my mind and that is why I feel I need a lot of meditation. I keep feeling like I cannot enjoy life at this current state of mind. The past 4 months have made life far more enjoyable so I guess to some extent I'm attached to the idea that perhaps that extensive practice has made it so. The fear is that if I stop I wont progress as much.

I've been practicing meditation zazen and vipassana for a little over a year or so, maybe more than that but its been very serious for the past 4 or 5 months. I've also been practicing yoga for about 3 years and teach yoga and meditation as well. True, I'm still an novice. I just really dont like the suffering caused by my mind which I tend to be very sensitive to. This is why I've been trying to meditate so much.

There is also another fear and that is that now that I have finished school (I'm graduating in a week!) I have to start looking for a job. Now its time to enter into the "real world" and I feel like I cannot do anything until I have purified my mind. I have big goals when it comes to my spiritual path.

[curtblabla]

Some mistakes that i was doing like you :

First : Thinking that meditation is separate from my daily activities, meditation means doing every act with consciousness, while you are typing - type and it becomes a meditation. If you had real silence, real awareness, then when you go back in the world - the meditation becomes stronger because you need more awareness. While youre just sitting doing nothing, minimal awareness is needed because there isnt much going on, but when youre doing something more awareness is needed, so the consciousness is expanded.

Second : Frustration - i was frustrated with meditation, i wanted enlightenment, to become a buddha and allow the universe to expand in me... lol. This idea brought only frustration so it just dropped. You wanting more time in meditation means youre desiring something, could be enlightenment could be peace of mind, could be anything, just be aware and it will drop.

Third : Trying to "clean your mind", you cant clean it, it can only be transcended, by a here now, presentness, by a no mind. Your thoughts are not you as you know, so dont worry just relax and watch the garbage, youre getting involved.

Fourth : Getting serious, i have a problem with this as well, seriousness creates all the trouble for you, just relax and dont be serious, when i see myself getting serious about being here-now, i start swearing or jumping around or running around without clothes in my house lol, so joke, dont do same mistakes i did, and still do, the serious one i still do it at times, but now its like gone with the running around without clothes... lol

Fifth: Forgetting that youre a master as well. When youre in a here-now, youre enlightened, you have become a master so dont worry. If youre seeking a forever enlightenment, then more here-now moments have to be created as masters say.