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Question
Every time I have a long and deep meditation, or go on some uplifting retreat, I come back to "the world" with such an awesome joy and peace in my heart. Then, gradually, it seems to wane away when the harsh dualities of maya kick back in. This happens again and again and it is frustrating, sometimes leaving me in a seemingly lower state than I was before the upliftment. This causes a sort of spiritual anxiety that makes me want to run off to the mountains or explode into infinite. Any advice?
Answer
It’s natural after having a deep experience in meditation to want to ’hold on’ to that feeling. But as long as we are still living in this world, we still have karma that involves us in outward activity. So the question is how to best make that adjustment back to the activity of our lives.
One way is to make a deeper comittment to more regular, or longer, daily meditation. We can use the momentum that we received from a retreat or deep meditation to carry us into a much deeper daily practice. We can also use that feeling of frustration, or that deep yearning to permanently experience ’awesome joy and peace’, as a prod to changing habits in our lives, and meditating more often.
Finally, find a way to share the blessings you receive in meditation with others. That will only make those blessings grow over time - whereas if we try and hang on to them too tightly, they’ll only slip through our fingers.
