Difficult time Meditating

Hi Friends,
I'm new on here but I have been feeling uneasy lately. For the past 4 months I have been meditating very intensely; up to 8 hours a day. I've been lucky because my circumstances have permitted this. And now, my circumstances are even more permitting because I've finished school but I have been unable to meditate! I've been having a difficult time just sitting for more than 30 minutes at a time and have only been able to do about 2 hours a day. This worries me because I felt like I was really starting to make progress. Does anyone have any feedback on this? Anything would be helpful. Thanks!

Much Peace and Love!

 

Don't sit.

Go take a walk and meditate while you're walking.

=]

 

Don't meditate more than you feel like you want to. Stick with it everyday if possible, but even if you only feel like meditating for 5 minutes it is more effective than meditating for 5 hours if it is a nuisance.

 

Best to set aside a time and place for meditation and stick to it. If you do not then you will not have the definite experience of meditation and instead you may be contemplative or merely enjoying a state of abstraction.

In any case, it is not good to be in an unstructured environment, without peers, doing a nonspecific meditation, for huge swaths of time. If you continue like this you will not be able to avail yourself of another's understanding since you will have no ostensible boundaries with which to define what you're doing.

I always say, there is no such thing as 'meditation.' What there are are meditation 'techniques.' These techniques are the proprietary teachings of previous individuals and their lineages. It is best to choose one and stick to it for a duration of time. Then if it doesn't suit you choose another.

People often do what they consider is a Buddhist regime when they meditate. They sit, and allow their awareness to flow, and call that meditation, not realizing that that is a type of meditation which is appropo to the Buddhist outlook. One cannot do vipassana meditation without a Buddhist framework as the thought behind the technique is what guides the meditation.

However, there are a million other types of meditation.

You do say, and I quote, "This worries me because I felt like I was really starting to make progress." I would wonder what sort of progress occurs from any meditation??? I do not recognize myself anything called progress in meditation because my meditation is still the same today as it was from day one.

Although it is said that meditation will allow for the sense of increase in internal 'size.' But that is allegorical as one doesn't get 'bigger.' And also, I was born into this world a bit wary, and too OCD, and meditation has allowed me to be more spontaneous and less compulsive. otherwise I guess I may have had to resort to psychiatry to solve what I perceived my defects. If you're like me then maybe this is in the direction of what you mean by progress, that is, the solution of a specific type of issue that you have. I don't mean to specify what that might be. But if this is of the essence then maybe ask if there are more succinct and developed ways to acheive that.

My real fear for you is that you might throw yourself into a state of mania/depression or something even worse. I have seen this, and any unbalanced lifestyle given wholly to one sort of experience tends to distend things, by definition. Balance, my Friend. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Please do not meditate all day or night long. Life is not about meditation, though it also isn'tnot about meditation. But plenty more exists, and often, especially where one uses ishtadevata, I find it funny because one will say - oh, I am practicing, but then if they stop, they will obsess over their ishtadevata, and then it's almost like they practiced even more concentratedly.