What Was That One Thing....

... that made you realize you were on the right track? What one thing made you realize that your practice was effective and worthwhile?

"
... that made you realize you were on the right track? What one thing made you realize that your practice was effective and worthwhile?

"

I don't suffer like I once did. Happy new year's everybody!

Nick

I became much better in letting things go.

Jack

I think it was the loss of anxiety - even at very early stages when I had only been meditating for less than a year. I didn't have anything notable going on in my practice - I was just trying to sit every day and not daydream. But I got hit with a bunch of really horrible catastrophes right around that point, and I remember being impressed that I was coping as well as I was, not a basket case. I figured the meditation must be helping even though it didn't feel like anything much had changed. And as I kept at it, those kinds of changes kept becoming more and more evident - the loss of anxiety, the loss of fear, and so on. First in one kind of situation, then in another. Each time it kind of surprised me, because I really didn't know what exactly to expect from meditation. It was motivating, and encouraged me to keep going.

If I am on the right track, then I realized it when I came across MCTB and this website, and saw these practices actually working for people.

When I could deal with difficult people and situations with little to no anxiety.

Ditto to all the above. And i have to add all the physiological experiences ( Kundalini,jhanas )

Nice question Chris.

When I first started meditating, I remember a particularly pleasant, happy, calming, peaceful sit that told me 'this is for me'. Looking back, I now see that getting experiences like that are hardly the point, but oh well.

It's been hard recently to say why I practice - because I've been up to the eyeballs in aversion and pain - and so the reason I usually give is that I'm curious or that I can't seem to escape it (I gave up meditating entirely in Feb 2009 and then somehow found my way back in Sept 2010).

That said, the experiences of equanimity in the last month or so have taught me a lot about what this practice is all about. Or at least, I think they have!

I knew I was on the right track the first time I encountered MCTB and the Theravada tradition teachings and thus discovered that what was being talked about in those works almost exactly mirrored the realizations which I'd already made on my own.

When Kenneth talked me through the first 4 Jhanas and I realized that happiness was totally arbitrary. I laughed continuously for almost an hour afterwords.

I think this one is the best candidate, though there are many. The night where the sense of being "me" evaporated, and i walked around in a strange and beautiful impersonal state for two hours. I'm guessing this was the entrance to second or third path

Sorry for being so late to this discussion, but the question is so good and provocative that I had to add my two cents.

I realized that practice was worthwhile when I saw clearly how screwed up my mind was. Through the clarity of sitting I saw the carousel of thoughts/feelings/emotions going round and round and round and watching this process do nothing but succeed in making me miserable. This neurosis machine had been there all along but until I started sitting it was unknown to me. It was a bit of a hilarious shock to realize that I was kinda of nuts.