I've always been very "mindful" and depending on your inclination to cynicism, that inevitably means finding out that life is what it is.
This happened to me in golf. I was naturally decent at it without ever taking a lesson or watching a video about how to swing. That only got me so far. Now I'm taking lessons and relearning everything. I feel worse at the sport today than I was two years ago. But if I acknowledge the truth in that and push forward, I'll ultimately be much better than I could have been.
Same process with meditation. I've been practicing for 11+ years and right now my practice is pretty challenging. But that comes with the process.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Archery-Eugen-Herrigel/dp/037...
AKA Workaholic. Just another way to distract oneself from the existential dread.
I read a book on Zen Buddhism once about 20 years ago and it made sense to me. I've never read or practiced anything related since which makes me a constant practitioner in a way. Maybe i'm blessed or cursed but, to me, the endless pursuit of meditation/mindfulness is the same as the endless pursuit of anything else.
Not sure what you're even asking here - everyone has problems. Would you advise them to ignore their problems and instead distract themselves with something else?
> Maybe i'm blessed or cursed but, to me, the endless pursuit of meditation/mindfulness is the same as the endless pursuit of anything else.
So, in a word, nihilism.
Here is how meditation can help here. (1) You become okay with having those sort of thoughts - you don't have to flee from them or push them away. (2) You can observe exactly based on what you criticize yourself, or what you feel hung up on. (3) After meditating, with a clear mind, you can rationally consider those matters. "Huh, do I really regret <xyz> decision? Why does <abc> aspect of it bother me now that I notice it?". You can resolve this conflict now.
This is my experience. Besides this, it just feels good to be calm.
> Why would I want to get unhappy again because someone tells me it’s good for me?
I also understand this sentiment. Sometimes if something gives you anxiety or intrusive thoughts, its better to leave it and let it slip by your thoughts rather than to bring it into attention. But even so I want to tell you this - a lot of the benefit of meditation comes not from exercising your cognitive and reasoning abilities, but from just being okay with how things are. It's really that simple.
As far as I'm aware, most meditation and mindful practices are descendent of Theravada buddhist discipline, which is not so much about rumination, but observing, and not reacting to one's thoughts and sensation, as well as the understanding that these thoughts and sensations will come to pass.
So say, if you found yourself in a cycle of self-pitying rumination, with enough practice you would hopefully become aware of the arising of thought, and learn to not let it affect you, and allow it to pass. Such practice is difficult, and often dispiriting. Proper guidance by an expert is definitely encouraged, and mitigates these adverse outcomes.
In my 20s, I would routinely get into yelling and screaming matches with girlfriends. There were two significant driving forces behind that:
- that is how my parents interacted. Things are good, someone screws up, everyone yells at each other for a while, and the next day it’s as if nothing happened. There were addictions involved...
- because it was the family dynamic I was used to, I was naturally attracted to people with similar disagreement-resolution styles.
I started down this path when I met someone awesome (now going 10 years strong), and she came from a family that uhhh wasn’t quite as messed up as mine. We’d have a disagreement, I’d yell, and she would shut down. She basically told me that if I didn’t stop trying to argue like that, she’d be gone.
So I started figuring out how to take something I was upset about and generally stay calm enough to discuss it, but the anger was still there, I was just suppressing it. Turns out, when I did that consistently, I started to go emotionally numb. Sure, I didn’t fly off the handle when I was upset, but I also didn’t find much joy in anything either (which I had before!)
What I basically concluded one night was that I had effectively found my “volume knob” and I had turned it down too much. Therapy and meditation (encouraged by the therapist) helped me work through all the baggage that came from my weird childhood and helped me get that volume knob dialled in.
Now I have wonderful joyful experiences, and when my partner and I have a disagreement about something, we can resolve it calmly. I don’t think I’ve yelled at a single human being in probably 8 years.
Objectively happy vs. objectively miserable? I don’t know if objective applies since I didn’t collect any data :). But, if nothing else, I would wager my cortisol and other stress hormone levels are waaaaaaay down compared to how things used to be.
supressing, for me anyways, always lead to more stress and then a huge random argument about totally irrellevant things... conversely, mentally imagining that im "letting go" of that need/feeling to make my point, was alot more effective
It's actually a step in the right direction even if they "suffer more": this is merely the first step. But this is an issue if they get stuck here unless driving this to the conclusion.