How can I know if I am benefiting from my meditation practice?
How am I supposed to feel directly after a session?
How am I supposed to feel during my daily life as a result of meditation?
How can I know what kind of benefits I am getting from meditation?
How should I feel right after the session?
Meditation is not done to achieve something or to attain something.
To do something,
To attain something is a desire.
It's not meditation.
You have to let go of the thoughts that you need to achieve or attain something.
And we are not meditating to make ourselves feel good.
We meditate to free ourselves from the dichotomy of feeling good or feeling bad.
When we achieve something we want or attain something we want,
We feel good.
And that's when we call ourselves happy.
And on the other side of that coin,
If we don't attain something we want or achieve something we wanted to achieve,
Then we have to call ourselves unhappy.
Therefore,
If you are happy,
Then on the other side there is unhappiness.
So if you feel good,
Then essentially what comes after is you feel bad.
This is called the cycle of reincarnation.
And it is this cycle of reincarnation that we can free ourselves.
And your mind is at peace.
It's at total equanimity.
And it's that sense of peaceful equanimity that is the objective of meditation.
What we can do in reality,
In everyday life,
Is try to reduce the amplitude between that feeling good and that feeling bad to be as close as possible to equanimity.
So once after you are done with meditation,
You have to let go of your need to evaluate whether this meditation session went bad or went good.
Because the state of our mind,
Our physical body,
Is different from everyday depending on what we went through that day.
All you have to do is become aware,
Saying,
This is what I'm feeling today.
This is a phenomenon that's coming through today.
And you can say that you have gained a little more sense of equanimity after meditation than before meditation.
And if you meditate,
Say,
For about a year,
And then after a year of meditation,
Your mind is more at peace and maintains its equanimity better when conversing with someone,
When seeing a phenomenon,
When hearing something,
Then you can say that you have advanced.
Basically,
The reactions you get is the suffering,
The feeling bad,
The sadness,
The grief,
The anger.
Those reactions reduce when you don't get something that you wanted.
Then you know that you're advancing in this path.
Because you tend to understand why that person is doing what that person is doing,
Know that that's how that person believes,
That's where that person is coming from.
Basically,
You normally don't get stressed out because you don't get what you want,
So people don't do what you want them to do.
You tend to take the approach of an explorer,
Kind of an investigator of seeing why is this happening.
And if you have seen these changes,
This transformation within you,
Then you're doing meditation well.
And if you try to evaluate the state of your meditation through your everyday kind of changing moods every day,
Then you're not really trying to evaluate meditation at all.
Because you're not letting go of your desires or actually trying to actively address your desires.
