One thing I have learned about the 'spiritual path', and even just life in general, is that if you are seeking significant change, you will go through a period of internal chaos. One does not go from point a to point c without some sort of repurcussion. Think of it as cheating on your homework in secondary school. Sure copying a homework assignment saves time and effort, but mentally skipping that assignment will make advancing more difficult. When you complete the assignment adequately yourself, you face each challenge. Nothing is overlooked. No answer left blank without a struggle. When you experience life for what it is, and your desires for what they are, you are going to be disenchanted at times. Life is not all beer and skittles. In order to experience the spiritual growth you desire, you must grow. In order to grow, you must face challenges.
For me personally, I know that one problem I encountered while delving into the spiritual path was when I read that many spiritual gurus suggest to ask yourself, "Who am I?" repeatedly. While asking myself this, I kept getting the answer, "a drug addict"—over and over again. This clearly was not the answer I desired, so I kept searching within myself, and found that at that particular moment in time, that was it. I had no other immediate answer. I had nothing else to tie my existence to. I was a sum of my actions, and my actions were using drugs. After that realization, I felt miserable. This was comparable to the type of misery one experiences while going through the grieving of the death of someone dear to them. Afterall, I was grieving over the death of someone dear to me. I had been dead for a while—a long while. When this realization hit, although it was no surprise, experiencing it on a spiritual level intensified it tenfold. I soon found myself feeling completely atrocious, until finally I became so discontent with my life situation, that I started to make changes. I suppose what I am getting at is that meditation and the spiritual path in general bring forth a multitude of cognizance. When we go through the transition period when we get used to "just being", we will often find that we are very discontent with something in our lives. We will then frequently begin to meditate more—as if to find some magical way to shut off all we are discontent with. The truth is, there is no magical way to shut off everything until we address it. If we feel uncomfortable in silence, it is probably because we feel uncomfortable in general. If we feel uncomfortable in general, the only way to address that is to awknowledge the source of discomfort. It is quite common for the individual to feel as though meditation is supposed to leave us with such a profoundly positive response, that when we do not feel initially feel that, we feel as though something is wrong. We then begin to wonder what it is that is wrong with us, and why we were not receptive to such a method. The truth is, meditation provides assistance, not complete alleviation. I strongly encourage you to honestly ask yourself what it is you expected from meditation. It is highly possible that your expectations of the immediate outcome were too high. Western culture tends to look for a quick fix for everything. If you were looking for meditation to do the footwork for you, you will continue to be disappointed.
I very much agree with SideOrderofOpiates.
Sometimes meditation serves little more than a way to temporarily relax and escape the world, but when our issues come with us to the mat and when we take mindfulness into our lives off the mat, we're bound to run into some difficulties. I read on-line recently that
everyone who goes far enough on "the path" will inevitably go through periods of discomfort, sorrow, despair, frustration, etc.. When these arise in our practice, we can avoid mindfulness and self-inquiry, but if we want to grow, we need to "go through the darkness." The sorrow doesn't mean meditation isn't working; it likely means that you're experiencing some dissatisfaction with the way you see things. It can be hard to welcome this darkness into our lives, as it is sometimes very painful, but if we realize that in order to find ourselves we must confront our conditiones selves, then enduring the pain becomes somewhat easier.
I read that doing certain mind training requires a "fearless determination to uproot conditioning and to remain in attention in the face of reactive conditioning. Not doing so can lead to emotional problems." So if you can find the determination to go through this darkness, it becomes a little bit easier.
Try meditating on impermanence and realize that these emotions are temporary and will pass. For me, it often helps to do some compassion meditation or tonglen before doing insight practice. This gives me the courage to remain in attention, to "stand in the fear," knowing that doing so will plant seeds for our future happiness.
Also, if you can't pinpoint why you're feeling the sorrow, try having chats with your internal therapist. Ask yourself what's on your mind, what cares, desires, fears, etc. you have. What's been going on in life recently? I find that having these chats can help me pinpoint subtle things I'm hung up on but don't consciously realize.
Look into the dark night of the soul, spiritual crisis, spiritual depression (all the same things). These phenomena are a natural part of awakening, and there's lots of good information out there for helping you get through the dark periods. My advice would be to have compassion for yourself and to as much as possible identify with the objective observer inside.
I'm on the tail-end of a dark night; PM me if you think you're going through one. I have lots of suggestions for how to get out. It will take some work, but the efforts worth it if you stick to it.
One last thing: you're likely near a so-called point-of-no-return. If you are going through a dark night, there's a point after which it's
highly advised to stick with your meditation practice for life. Some people quit because it gets hard, and they're cast off into the dark night, in a life-long sort of limbo.
Good luck, try to find a teacher or some spiritual friends to give you encouragement when you need it.
