Why did you start meditating?

[kieranperez]

Make this as detailed or conscise as you want. I find this actually really fascinating. I love knowing and understanding why people start endeavors in the beginning. I feel like for a lot of us, especially in the west, we don’t grow up learning things like meditation. For a lot of us, myself included, we get into meditation as a result of suffering in our lives and then we discover this infinite gold mine. So I would just like to know why you started. Not really so much “the how” (how you found it), although feel free to include that  I’m curious on what your first initial motive was. Was it just suffering? Did you already know about it and wanted to give it a shot? 

My why:

I got into meditation because I was suffering so much from being suicidal. I remember one day in my junior or senior year in high school I had a school psychologist who was from vietnam and practiced Buddhism there and then in China. I remember I was seeing him for the first time one day during school hours and I was just so angry and depressed and he guided me through such a basic body scan and mindfulness meditation of being aware. I laugh a little about it now because I remember him describing mindfulness with noting and labeling on the fan that was in the room and hearing for what it was and not having a clue of what he meant. By the end of each sit corn 5 minutes I couldn’t believe the calm I felt. I had NEVER felt that in my life.

Time went on though and quickly forgot about it. Later on, I was in a hospitalization program at UCSF for DBT (dialectal behavioral therapy) immerision. We started at 8am sharp and we did a mindfulness meditation for the first 15 minutes everyday. I was so depressed and lost in my mind and so angry I didn’t know what to do. I was on 6 medications p/day and nothing was working. I knew though, that I looked forward to those first 15 minutes everyday. 

I got more interested after this program. The effects of meditation hadn’t been adding up and spilling into most of my day. I was still just so fucking upset and angry all the time and dealing with a toxic and dysfunctional family that was falling apart. I would wake up to screaming in the house, my mom with disassociative identity disorder had been tearing our family apart and my dad not handling things well at all alongside my own neuroses had motivated me to try and escape. 

Then, the day I became directly aware of the power this thing called meditation really is came... I was sitting on my bed listening to a 26 minute guided meditation lead by San Harris. This was a REALLY long time for me. The meditation became deeper as I followed along. Then, near the end, he gave the instructions of finding the thing that I call “I”. I remember not being able to grab hold of anything. I then realized how arbitrary this all is. I realized just how much I don’t know. I realized, I don’t have a fucking clue about who I am. My mind was fucked... and I loved it. 

[Natasha]

@kieranperez In a nutshell - to undo the conditioning and to root myself in the now.

[kieranperez]

1 hour ago, Natasha said:

@kieranperez In a nutshell - to undo the conditioning and to root myself in the now.

Why? 

Not objecting at all. I’m curious about why you wanted that. What did you think that would get you? What did you want from being more present? 

Edited July 29, 2018 by kieranperez

[MrDmitriiV]

Ha! I started meditating because I myself was a victim of a dysfunctional family))) Reading lots of books and just studying the way our mind works helped me transcend (at least on an intellectual level) from the pathetic mind loops 99%+ fall into...

I live in the same dysfunctional family, but I'm way happier and more peaceful)

 

[kieranperez]

1 minute ago, MrDmitriiV said:

Ha! I started meditating because I myself was a victim of a dysfunctional family))) Reading lots of books and just studying the way our mind works helped me transcend (at least on an intellectual level) from the pathetic mind loops 99%+ fall into...

I live in the same dysfunctional family, but I'm way happier and more peaceful)

 

If you had to take yourself back to when you first got started, what were you looking for? A way to find peace in all the nonsense that’s brought into a dysfunctional household (I can relate to that) and to alleviate a lot of the suffering that toxicity can bring? Hope your practice has been coming together!

[MrDmitriiV]

6 minutes ago, kieranperez said:

If you had to take yourself back to when you first got started, what were you looking for? A way to find peace in all the nonsense that’s brought into a dysfunctional household (I can relate to that) and to alleviate a lot of the suffering that toxicity can bring? Hope your practice has been coming together!

By far the biggest motivational point for me to start doing self-development work was my past verbal dysfunction of pronouncing the "r" sound. In my native languages it IS VERY important to pronounce it correctly, if you pronounce it the french way, it'll be very noticeable (and funny) in my native languages. And because I was going thru the hurdle of fixing it by myself, it led to me being VERY suicidal for the past 5 years))) 

The only reason I did not kill myself is because I didn't have a reliable option available. Even though I read 2 books on ways to kill myself, the only option was finding a good rope but even so there's no non-public place to hang myself because I'm very tall.

PS I am not suicidal anymore, studying my own mind over years helped enormously!

[Salvijus]

Self improvement 

But in a funny way it tutned out to be self destruction

Edited July 29, 2018 by Salvijus

[Nahm]

Because I wasn’t happy.  

In hindsight, because I was ‘living’ in a perfectly backwards reality. 

It’s a complete reverse now.

[Prabhaker]

6 hours ago, kieranperez said:

My why:

Almost similar circumstances but I was born in India and we grow up learning things like meditation but sometimes living conditions are so horrible that it becomes very difficult start a spiritual journey. So, I renounced almost everything, most of my wealth, job, family and now I almost live like a hermit.

[okulele]

Because I relied on psylocybin to feed me spiritualy and ingested it several times a week. Then I realized that meditation has no tolerance and I don't have to wait for the next hit of bliss a couple of days.

[moon777light]

my thoughts started to drown me, so i looked for a way to allievate thinking too much

[Natasha]

9 hours ago, kieranperez said:

Why? 

Not objecting at all. I’m curious about why you wanted that. What did you think that would get you? What did you want from being more present? 

Was tired of being efd by the ego

[kieranperez]

5 hours ago, okulele said:

Because I relied on psylocybin to feed me spiritualy and ingested it several times a week. Then I realized that meditation has no tolerance and I don't have to wait for the next hit of bliss a couple of days.

Why did you pursue spirituality in the beginning? What were you motivated by? We’re not really born and end up motivated by some higher sense drive to pursue truth  if only it worked that way. 

 

3 hours ago, Natasha said:

Was tired of being efd by the ego

What did that mean for you at the time? No one really starts after all understanding what an ego REALLY is outside of the conceptual idea we have. What did you think pursuing meditation in the beginning would get you? 

 

7 hours ago, Nahm said:

Because I wasn’t happy.  

In hindsight, because I was ‘living’ in a perfectly backwards reality. 

It’s a complete reverse now.

What were you feeling that wasn’t happiness? Anger? Deep depression? Anxiety? Panic attacks? Hollowness from excess materialism?

 

7 hours ago, Salvijus said:

Self improvement 

But in a funny way it tutned out to be self destruction

Why did you want to pursue self-improvement? What were motivated to “become” (I’m talking about back then, not now)? Was something going on or just something that wasn’t coming together in life that made you want to pursue meditation and self improvement? 

[Nahm]

38 minutes ago, kieranperez said:

 What were you feeling that wasn’t happiness? Anger? Deep depression? Anxiety? Panic attacks? Hollowness from excess materialism? 

All of those, not too many panic attacks though. Hollow to the extent I wasn’t even aware I was hollow. 

[B_Naz]

Leo told me to

[okulele]

@kieranperez I didn't pursue spirituality. I was exploring all kinds of drugs and realized that there is something very extraordinary when it comes to psychedelics. Kept taking them until I got an awakening and then one day I found myself watching Leo's video on how to meditate 

[Mao]

I used to have crippling anxiety I still can remember the feeling, I just wanted to escape my life, and meditation gave me that, so I used it for escapism until I experienced the bliss that comes with mindfulness, when it hit me I realized this new realm of possibility, everything changed. But then bipolar hit me and I started drowning in an endless spiral of misery until recently I had my first glimpses of enlightenment, for once in a very long time I felt liberated for my self, it might be a self-deception tho because I was about to commit suicide and I couldn't bullshit myself anymore so my mind had to do a trick it never did before, or maybe it was real bliss idk, either way it worked. Needless to say I still get bipolar depression physical symptoms (including the dark thoughts and dull mind) but for some reason reason it doesn't bother me much anymore, even anxiety doesn't bother that much anymore, don't get me wrong I still have to do so much work to balance my brain chemistry, correct my thoughts, cultivate awareness, etc. But my god it's so much better now. 

This is unnecessarily long, but I ain't deleting ?

[Igor82]

Because Leo told me so, I wanted though to find that ultimate bliss of truth. I really wanted to higher my baseline of happiness, and this was my motivation. I neurotically made it a habit in the beginning, but I quickly fell in love with it.

I'm not gonna quit meditation, ever, why would I.. I love meditating even if I won't get enlightened in 20 years

 

[youngshinzen]

Lost my intuition/emotional compass for years, once I got it back I knew how important it is. Googled „how to strengthen the intuition“ and read about meditation. First introduction to meditation was by Leo and that‘s how I discovered actualized? 

Edited July 30, 2018 by youngshinzen

[cirkussmile]

Meditation is beyond psychedelics.

Meditation is key to real peace and happiness.