[ChrisNorstrom]

Should be Titled: "Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase MY Happiness".

For me it does but I practice a very different and rare form of meditation. I can only call it "Sleeping Awake". Which took a while to achieve.

Basically, when you go to sleep at night your body slows its breathing & heart rate and you loose feeling of your limbs, while your mind looses consciousness and you black out. Your body and mind shut down at the same time. With meditation, particularly deep meditation (out of body experience / trance / hypnosis) you "sleep awake". Your body shuts down and goes to sleep but you are completely conscious the entire time. You can't feel your limbs, heart beat, or lungs breathing. You completely loose track of time and gravity and feel like you're floating around in a massive black, empty, nothingness.

If feels like you're floating around in the universe before it was made. Completely empty and quiet. No gravity. No direction. No time. No space. No memories. No emotions. No body. No flesh. It's the most peace you'll ever experience in your life apart from sleep and death. There's absolutely nothing on your mind. The only thing you're aware of, is your existence. That's all. And when you wake up, you feel amazingly refreshed. Not just physically but mentally. For me personally, I feel content and happy the rest of the day.

It makes me happy because the experience reminds me that, honestly, I don't matter. None of us do. We might matter to each other, but to the universe (which is mostly empty) our existence is worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless. No matter what happens in your life, good or bad. Existence goes on, even after life is gone. And this concept, that nothing really matters, just takes a huge load off your shoulders. I don't know why "Sleeping Awake" evokes these feelings but it just does. It's a very calming and neutral experience.

So meditation for me did the opposite of what it did to the author of the article. It allowed me to control my emotions much more and see things from a neutral point of view. It allowed me to think, and observe an event or thought BEFORE reacting to it with an opinion or emotion.

[lionhearted]

For anyone thinking of checking this out, try a sensory deprivation tank --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank

Amazing experience. Similar to how OP describes.

[kinleyd]

@ChrisNorstrom: I agree with you, as an hour a day of meditation for a year (which is a lot and highly commendable) didn't seem to work for KenjiCrosland.

I too am a novice in pursuit of happiness, with just some basic lessons taken from teachers plus some self learning. However, like you my experience has been much more positive.

My take is similar to what others have mentioned in their comments: meditation is but one of a number of legs on which true happiness stands. It is through meditation that one gets glimpses of what Buddhists call the "nature of mind". These only remain glimpses until you build the other legs: boddhicitta (poorly translated into English as compassion) and a deep-seated realization that all things are impermanent. The practice of boddhicitta and the understanding of impermanence, among others, are the antidote to ego or the concept of the self, the prime cause of all suffering which arises from the desire and craving that comes part and parcel with ego. Boddhicitta requires the building of a thought process of thinking more of others, and gradual surrender of the desires for oneself (less of I, me, mine, etc). Practice all these elements together with meditation and I'm pretty certain one can only be the better for it. In my opinion Kenji is lacking the other aspects without which meditation can't provide happiness.

It's worth noting that "happiness" is a loaded term, quite different for different people. I'm taking a good guess that in it's ultimate form, Buddhist masters would equate happiness with enlightenment with nature of mind, which is what one sees glimpses of while meditating. IMHO, that itself is something to chew upon.

[KenjiCrosland]

I suppose I didn't make it clear enough in my post, but the practice over the year has led to a significant increase in well-being for me. Emotions, though they may be felt more strongly, also pass more quickly. Instead of a unsustainable happiness or Euphoria, it's more like a pervading sense of peace. I don't think I could have kept it up if this wasn't the case!

[joshkaufman]

Can you recommend any tutorials or books about this type of meditation? I'm curious.

[monch]

I found this

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Meditation/Meditation_Tech...

[personlurking]

Kind of sounds a bit like lucid dreaming, or astral projection.

[gnaritas]

It would be lucid dreaming if he went deeper, but if he's still just seeing just black he's not deep enough into it for the dreaming to start. Next come color blobs, then sounds, then flashes of imagery and eventually full on 3d as if you're there dreaming. It's wicked to maintain consciousness without blacking out from the waking state into the dream state.

[naitbit]

Well even though I agree that what we do is "worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless" in universe scale it does not make me happy. I can be happy by thinking for example that universe defaults to not-existence (since most of it is empty/dead/not alive) and I'm lucky enough to experience life(even for short time), but I'm rather being happy despite worthlessness of my life rather than thanks to it. Could you explain your thought process that led do you to happiness from being meaningless?

[soup10]

For something to have meaning, it has to have context. For instance getting a high score in tetris has meaning to me. But for most people it's meaningless. For some people, "the big bang theory" is meaningful. For others, it's completely meaningless.

To truly feel everything is meaningless, sounds like depression.

[naitbit]

Well personally I'm quite happy with my life. For my helping other live better lives* is meaningful(but if everyone had same purpose it would be uncomfortably circular). I found it interesting that ChrisNorstrom can be happy when he reminds himself that he does not matter. Either I misunderstood something or there is a way to be happy even about that.

*happier/longer/leading to total higher number of happy people in the future etc(Although obviously my success in this goals is very limited)

[ChrisNorstrom]

I found it interesting that ChrisNorstrom can be happy when he reminds himself that he does not matter.

It removed the stress in my life. I was at a point in my 20s when my failures started to surface and I started realizing that my desires and dreams were likely to never happen. That's when I became aware that I was not going to accomplish 99% of what I wanted to do in life. My idea of happiness was riding so much on "I have to accomplish ________" that it just destroyed me out when I wasn't able to accomplish _________.

After Sleeping Awake the relief was almost immediate. The realization that nothing matters, and more importantly nothing that you do matters or makes a dent in the universe somehow took away all the stress of failure. Failure was ok because it didn't matter, success wasn't all that important because it didn't matter.

When you live your life with the mindset that everything you do will affect someone either now or in the future, doing anything becomes painfully stressful. Because you're afraid of messing up someone else's life. Weather or not you have children now will dictate weather or not millions of people will live thousands of years from now. All of that puts a tremendous amount of stress on me. The realization that none of it matters takes away the pain. Weather I have kids or not, in a few billion years the sun will engulf the earth and everything that humanity has ever built will be destroyed. It'll look like we were never here. No one will care. No one will miss us. We truly will not matter to anyone because there will be no one to even notice we are gone. As depressing as that sounds, there's an upside to it all. Live your life and be happy because you're only here for a short moment in time.

Also we live in a very connected world right now. And the human mind just wasn't made to live with that kind of information. Every time someone dies or is suffering we find out about it. Every war, every conflict, every pain, every bit of injustice is broadcast all over the world. It's inescapable. The more you know the harder it is to be happy with that kind of knowledge. The realization that none of those events matter takes away their ability to deeply hurt you.

The problem is I care too much, other people's problems become my problems. I'm very sensitive and extremely emotional. Which is why I avoid making friends with people. Their life and mine start getting intertwined and it just becomes too painful to go on. Same with family. Sometimes I like to fantasize that I'm the only human left on earth, everyones gone. Because I hate seeing unsolved problems, criminals not brought to justice, people not achieving their dreams (like me) or going through pain.

So with that in mind, realizing that none of it matters, is the only thing keeping me from going insane. It allows me to let go and be at peace with existing in a non perfect world.

[eludwig]

" We might matter to each other, but to the universe (which is mostly empty) our existence is worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless."

I respectfully disagree. You ARE the universe. You are it! What else could you be? What else is there? There is no you apart from it.