Thread: Meditation opens a Pandora's box of suffering...

Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

I assume that during meditation, you're only supposed to feel better, not worse.

False. While meditation is more often peaceful than not, anything and everything can come up. If there's an emotion or situation prominent in your mind, especially if you're trying not to think about it, it will almost certainly get right up in your face.

A couple of things helped me out when I first started breathing meditation, both picked up from assigned reading in Jack Kornfield's book A Path With Heart. First, he compared meditation to training a puppy:

Spoiler for Kornfield p. 58-59:

Whether a practice calls for visualization, question, prayer, sacred words, or simple meditation on feelings or breath, it always involves the steadying and conscious return, again and again, to some focus. As we learn to do this with a deeper and fuller attintion, it is like learning to steady a canoe in waters that have waves. Repeating our meditation, we relax and sink into the moment, deeply connecting with what is present. We let ourselves settle into a spiritual ground; we train ourselves to come back to this moment. This is a patient process. St. Francis de Sales said, "What we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience."
...
St. Francis de Sales continued by saying:

Bring yourself back to the point quite gently. And even if you do nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back a thousand times, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

In this way, meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, "Stay." Does the puppy listen? It gets up and it runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. "Stay." And the puppy runs away over and over again. Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over, and pees in the corner or makes some other mess. Our minds are much the same as the puppy, only they create even bigger messes. In training the mind, or the puppy, we have to start over and over again.

Note that in referring to "your hour," de Sales is not advising only novices, but also experienced practitioners, who also sometimes spend a whole session just starting over. You really can't "fail" at meditation, because the whole point is to bring your attention back to the point of focus (such as breath) again and again, which you could not do if the mind weren't inclined to wander in the first place.

Which brings up the second thing I found really helpful starting out: naming the demons. Get to know the experiences that arise during meditation, regardless of whether they are pleasant or unpleasant.

Spoiler for Kornfield p. 84-85:

Begin by sitting comfortably, focusing awareness on your breathing. As you feel each breath, carefully acknowledge it with a simple name: "in-breath, out-breath," saying the words silently and softly in the back of your mind. This will help you keep track of the breathing, which gives your thinking mind a way to support awareness rather than wandering off in some other direction. Then as you get quiet and as your skill grows, you can notice and name more precisely, "long breath," "short breath," "tight breath," or "relaxed breath." Let every kind of breath show itself to you.

As you continue to develop you meditation, the process of naming can be extended to other experiences as they arise in your awareness. You can name the bodily energies and sensations that come up, such as "tingling," "itching," "hot," or "cold." You can name feelings, such as "fear" or "delight." You can then extend the naming to sounds and sights, and to thoughts such as "planning" or "remembering."

In developing the naming practice, stay focused on your breathing unless a stronger experience arises to interrupt your attention. Then include this stronger experience in the meditation, felling it fully and naming it softly for as long as it persists--"hearing, hearing, hearing" or "sad, sad, sad." When it passes, return to naming the breath until another strong experience arises. Keep the meditation simple, focusing on one thing at a time. Continue to name whatever is most prominent in each moment, being aware of the everchanging stream of your life.

At first, sitting still and naming may seem awkward or loud, as if it interferes with your awareness. You must practice naming very softly, giving ninety-five percent of your energy to sensing each experience, and five percent to a soft name in the background. When you misuse naming, it will feel like a club, a way to judge and push away an undesirable experience, like shouting at "thinking" or "pain" to make it go away. Sometimes, in the beginning, you may also feel confused about what name to use, looking through your inner dictionary instead of being aware of what is actually present. Remember, the practice of naming is much simpler than that; it is just a simple acknowledgment of what is present.