Meditation Haters

[h inandout]

What's so wrong with meditating.  Can someone please explain this to me!? Do these haters want me to literally take action during all parts of my day, and never let my thoughts settle?

Pops: Don't listen to enlightened people! They're so full of shit.  No, I'm not gonna help you with getting to a Vipassana retreat, but I'll sign you up for an ayahausca retreat any day.

Mom: organized religion is the worst thing in the world and it's only purpose is to shame and guilt you.

Step Dad: why would you go on a meditation retreat? I think riding my bike is pretty much meditation.

Ex: I don't care if yoi want peace.  I am going to watch the TV loudly all the time and talk your ear off whenever I feel like and then get angry at you when it seems like your drifting off.

Buddhist Sanctuary: You probably have mental health issues, so you're not welcome to stay with us.

Me: Can any of you see that meditation has been one of the most profound tools that have helped me through times when you were absent?  Can any of you see that I need to be a part of a supportive community in order to actually pursue my own path?  Maybe I should ditch all of you.  

Edited March 22, 2017 by MissMiki

[RossE]

Nice rant there 

I understand your frustrations. I'd say meditation is about making you functional in this mad world we live in and accepting it ALL. This includes bitchy family members and friends.

If you begin discussions of meditation with them, stop. It's a lot easier that way. Just keep doing it and take what you learn from it into the world. This tool is primarily for you just now, not anyone else.

If they begin discussions with you and speak negatively of it, don't listen to them. Don't react emotionally. Just accept what they have to say and be thankful that you received the gift of meditation. This is a test of your commitment to the path.

You will get to a retreat no problem, you just need to be patient for now. If you can't book a formal retreat, trying switching your phone off for a whole day, stay in your house. No entertainment, no music, no hobbies. Just meditate and between meditations, be still and calm.

[Prabhaker]

16 hours ago, MissMiki said:

What's so wrong with meditating.  Can someone please explain this to me!?

Every child around the earth, in all the societies – is forced to renounce his being, is forced to accept others’ opinions about himself. Every child is born absolutely accepting himself as he is. But the parents are afraid, the society is afraid: if he remains being-oriented he will never be a slave. And the society needs slaves, the society needs obedient people. The society does not need individuals, it needs phoney personalities. It needs people who are efficient, but not intelligent. It allows intelligence only to the extent that you remain efficient, but it does not allow your intelligence to grow to its maximum – because at the maximum, intelligence will be so rebellious, so revolutionary, it will be fire.

It needs dead people, dull people, unintelligent people, so they can go on and on working for others’ interests. The society, from the very beginning, teaches you, ”Listen to what others say about you, because that is what you are.” 

You don't know exactly who you are. That's why you are afraid, because if others' opinions change, you change. You are in the grip of their hands. And this is the trick society has used. 

Society has a technique: it makes you very ambitious for social respect - through it, it manipulates you. If you follow the rules of society, it respects you. If you don't follow the rules of society, it insults you tremendously, it hurts you very badly. And to follow the rules of society is to become a slave.

Yes, it pays you great respect for being a slave, but if you want to be a free man, the society becomes angry: it does not want to have anything to do with you.

To really be a free man and to exist in any society is very difficult. It is almost impossible to co-exist, because the society does not want any free man.

[Dodo]

Meditation is the way to find yourself, but you shouldn't be opposed to noise or other opinions. Everyone loves a circlejerk, but if you have the truth of silence / stillness/ your true self,  nobody can say anything that will bother you.

SO those characters in your life, the haters, the noise makers, the doubters- they offer you the opportunity to see meditation, your true self in the midst of experience. No, you cannot control others and they will never 100% do as your Ego wants so it can be happy and at peace.

They are showing you there is deeper to go. If you can only find peace when doing a formal meditation, you have not found the silence behind the noise, or the nothingness behind and within everything! 

Also, haters gonna hate and fate is gonna fate

[Prabhaker]

19 hours ago, MissMiki said:

Don't listen to enlightened people!

Unless you are born and raised in favorable, loving and peaceful environment. Meditation needs great work. It is arduous, it is an uphill task. To remain non-meditative is easy in a way. You have not to do anything about it, you are already non-meditative, everybody is born non-meditative. But to become meditative really needs great courage, great determination, great patience, because to go beyond the mind is the most complicated phenomenon.

[h inandout]

There were all such beautiful respnses!  I've been having increasing night terror where I just instantle wake up with a gut wrenching feeling of shame and guilt and hopelessness for having lived such a lame life.  I wake up from my meditation from these terrors too.   Usually I can shake it off, and at the very least try to take steps towards a less lame life, and this process brings me a lot of joy even though I'm usually not very successful.  Does anyone else have these instant very intense feelings?

Edited March 24, 2017 by MissMiki

[FirstglimpseOMG]

I used to get a kind of mini panic attack like that when I realized during mid-life that there was no tomorrow. "I'll start eating better tomorrow, there's cheesecake in the fridge today." "I'll quit smoking tomorrow, I've got half a pack left & it's been a shitty day." "I'll start living fully and following my passions tomorrow, today I just need to smoke a joint & unwind."

So, when I realized, kind of over and over again, in mid-life, that there was no tomorrow, just more todays.. well, like you mentioned, the thoughts that arose out of nowhere that I had pissed away much of my life, that I was living very lamely... not fun.

We need this shit though, it wakes us up. Mid-life crises or moments of lucidity when you realize most of the shit you are doing is fairly stupid, low-consiousness, automated distraction can be panicky and depressing. Those moments of realization are real for you, and it's hard to mask them or call them anything else, once you're more aware. It's not someone else's ego telling you to shape up, it's your own higher self going "What in the fuck have I been doing and why can't I stop!" I think the scary thing isn't the realization that you may be living a lame life, it's the ego going "Aw for cryin' out loud, you had to mess with it didn't ya? Couldn't be happy with just being happy for moments at a time before you crash back into suffering could ya? Fine, be that way, but now you have to do the work that you've known about for some time, good luck with that, I don't want anything to do with it!"