Stress while meditating

[hikmatshiraliyev]

I started to meditate a month ago, but yesterday i felt so stressed during my meditation. I was trying to achieve something, like clearing my mind from thoughts. It ruined my meditation, what can i do? How can i drop the idea of "getting benefits of meditation quickly"?

[Amanaki]

First of all, You can not get benefit from meditation in a quick way. Meditation is a "slow" prosess that if stressed to want a goal it does not work for you. Take step by step and learn all the aspect of the meditation you have chosen to do. Meditation is both for calming the mind but also to grow your inner wisdom about life it self. 

The best you can do in the beginning is talking with a meditation teacher or someone who have long experience within the chosen meditation form.

Personally i do insight meditation (also called Vipassana)

 

[peanutspathtotruth]

@hikmatshiraliyev That's normal in the beginning, it can even happen occasionally again way down the road. This stress is exactly what can help you dive deep into the nature of it, the nature of this constant "doing" and "wanting to go somewhere". Let it be. Don't resist the stress, don't resist the resistance. Let it unfold without actively encouraging or discouraging it. It will show you what it's made of, just give it permission and patience.

I think you might have heard it here and there: Intense suffering is part of the journey. It's a very helpful tool. Get in the mindset of expecting it to happen so you don't get thrown off by it but also as I said: don't TRY to create it. When it's there, fine: work with it. When it's not there, also fine.

[Nahm]

@hikmatshiraliyev What is it? What’s on your mind? 

[PsiloPutty]

@hikmatshiraliyev  I know exactly what you're talking about. I went through that at the beginning, and honestly, even though I have progressed noticeably since then, I still do it sometimes at my new level of skill, maybe it's something that nags us the entire way. 

Good advice (for all of us) I think would be to tell you to treat your practice as though you were an unskilled carpenter trying to build a house. First you have to lay the foundation, and all you have to go on is advice from people who have done it before, and they can't physically assist you; you have to do it alone. As the walls go up and the thing starts to take shape, you don't need to rely so much on the advice of other carpenters, because you eventually, through repetition and error, get the feel of how to do things correctly, you just feel the correctness in the beams that you lay. You start to actually enjoy each little job that you do in making this house, and you don't focus so much on the final product, but rather find interest, peace and joy in the nail that you're hammering at this very moment. If you treat each nail that way, the house seems to get built by itself, you're just enjoying the learning process of setting boards straight and doing what's right in front of you without constantly looking up and imagining excessively what the thing will look and feel like when it's finished.

We just need to concentrate on what's going on right now at this moment in our practice. The house will go up on its own if we do that. If we're looking up all the time, we hammer our thumbs.