Can meditation help me through tough times?

[wisdomfinder]

Hi Everyone,

I am new here i've been doing meditation one and off for a few years but never really started doing it properly until i've have had some very tough things going on in my life.

Recently my wife and I have split up 3 weeks ago  I am not sure if any of you have turned to meditation because of something like this? I find that it is helping me through this tough time and calms my mind.

I normally do breath meditation for about 20 minutes at 11am and then another 20 minutes in the evening when I get home from work.

What I really need to know the more meditation I do will this help me get through this? Will it teach me to accept things what they are? Stop me from thinking about the past and future so much as I know living in the moment is one of meditations fundamentals.

Thank you in advance.

[wisdomfinder]

I'm sorry I seem to have put everyone on the spot 

[Purple]

I'm sorry to hear about you and your wife. I'm sure it's a terrible time. Unfortunately, there's no good short answer to your question. Meditation isn't going to help you through this in the next few weeks. It's not going to lessen the pain you're going through or make you unattached and calm. It's not a quick fix.

However, there are certainly many benefits to maintaining your current practice. It will put you in touch with what you're feeling. It will expose you to all the raw emotions you're going through. If you can learn to meet all that with compassion instead of aversion, you will indeed start to get past this.

Meditation won't turn you around in a few days and give you a new perspective. But it's invaluable in times of pain because it can teach you to experience it fully rather than run away.

My advice is to keep at it. Try not to identify with the myriad of feelings that will crop up. But you needn't avoid or fear them, either. Just let them come and go on their own.

Keep sitting. Keep watching your breath. It WILL help, just maybe not in the way you want it to right now.

[DK]

I can agree with Purple and also offer my own personal experience.

Meditation has made me more feeling of the unpleasant and painful aspects, and doesn't directly help get rid of them.  I can ask though, I can imagine there are good days and bad days, times when it is especially painful and times when it seems less so.  This is very important to watch, because it is seeing this that helps you let go of being so disturbed by these feelings.  You sit with a very bad feeling, you watch it, feel it without doing anything, and you watch it dissipate on its own.  You sit with a pleasant feeling, you watch it, feel it without getting to hopeful or excited, and you watch it also dissipate on its own.

This to me is one of the greatest benefits to meditation: it gives you time to watch and see how you as a human creature function, and shows you first hand that the worst feelings pass, and the best feelings pass as well, and there is no requirement to get caught up in them.

Meditation doesn't "do" anything, but it does give me the necessary time and space to see what it is I am doing and what it is that happens when certain thoughts arise, how I react to them, what chain of effects I am perpetuating through my actions.  When I want something I may or may not get it and that affects me, makes me uncomfortable either by striving for happiness or running from discomfort.  By watching the wanting, you get to see first hand that it goes away on its own, and all its noise and pressure is temporary.  This is why I feel I can't "want" anything from meditation, and can't expect it to give me anything; but I do feel it helps me stop doing the things that cause me unnecessary suffering, by helping me face exactly what it is I am doing.

Good luck and I hope you find your peace.

[wisdomfinder]

Thank you both for the advice, time is a great healer but meditation will help in my life as a whole anyway.

 

[Delma54]

Hi
Could anyone help?
I am confused, not sure if I observe impermanence properly when practicing .
The technique focuses on clearly seeing the arising & ceasing of physical & mental feelings by observation of the body.                                                                                                                            
1.   Q. Is it the arising & ceasing something that I have to experience in each scanned body part, separately? or
2.   Q. Are we aware of anicca on the actual passing or moving away from one body part to the next? Said, I am observing a sensation in the nose, I move down to the lips with a different sensation & so the old sensation of the nose becomes impermanent, it has ceased as a new feeling arises.

[redalert]

   Q. Is it the arising & ceasing something that I have to experience in each scanned body part, separately?

It can be, but does not have to be experienced this way. Similarly as when the breath dissolves and one becomes aware of body sensations, the body will dissolve and one will simply experience sensations arising and passing away rapidly.

   Q. Are we aware of anicca on the actual passing or moving away from one body part to the next? Said, I am observing a sensation in the nose, I move down to the lips with a different sensation & so the old sensation of the nose becomes impermanent, it has ceased as a new feeling arises.

Not necessarily. One can feel sensations in different parts of the body simultaneously, you can be aware of gross solidified sensations in the legs and also be aware of subtle sensations in the head. Sweeping these subtle sensations can then be done to unlock blind areas with little to no sensation, and break-up solidified sensations.