Radu / Singapore
When I joined this meditation 1 year ago, I was joining after 7 years of mood swings and severe depression. During that time I had gone to several psychiatrists and psychologists, was diagnosed first with seasonal depression (as my downs used to occur in winter time in Romania) and then with cyclothymia (a mild case of bipolar, which is deemed to be a serious mental illness). So I ended up taking a bunch of pills, all to no avail.
And then when I moved to Singapore 3 years ago, I felt like my mood swings were finally over. At least there was no winter here! But of course I was wrong. The mood swings occurred again. So I went through a cycle of desperately looking for a solution besides drugs. I tried a number of different personal development courses and seminars, from psychoanalysis to hypnosis and even more. Several times I thought I had finally found the solution, yet was proven wrong once again by yet another bout of depression.
Suffering from a really bad down period and completely frustrated, I came across this meditation. I started, as usual, eager to find the solution to my problems once and for all. Unfortunately, my expectations to feel happy immediately got in the way, so after just 2 months, during my first level, even though I felt some improvements, I decided it was taking too long. So I quit.
However, this did not solve my depression issues, so after 3 months and not having found a solution, I decided to come back and start this meditation again. And the second time round I didn’t stop.
Going through the levels, I began to realize that the cause of my ups and downs had a lot to do with my attachments and beliefs about myself. And it especially had a lot to do with all my “shoulds”: I should be confident all the time, I should be on time, I should never eat sweets, I should exercise every day, etc. Over the years I had accumulated so many rules about how I should live my life that I ended up feeling suffocated and trapped by them. And while at times it felt good and I was high as I was managing to respect them, obviously I could not always do that. So when I didn’t, I would eventually fall down into the depths of self-loathing and depression.
This meditation helped me a lot, enabling me to discard a lot of these false concepts, ideas and beliefs. Before, all I did was add more thoughts and standards, taking courses and seminars just to learn another set of rules. And yes, I followed them for a while just to fall short again. However, this meditation was different. This meditation is about discarding, purely taking everything out. This process was so liberating for me. It helped me be more flexible, and freed me from all of my shoulds.
I also became more aware of how selfishly I had lived my life. How I would always think of myself and disregard others. How I created so many addictions for myself, like overeating, oversleeping, wasting time on the Internet. And all this just because I wanted to get away from the reality that did not fit my mind world, my beliefs about how it should be so I can be happy.
Moving forward, I know that even though I have come a long way, there is still a long way to go. And no matter how quickly I want to reach the end, becoming totally free from my own mind world of concepts, beliefs and false ideas will take patience and time. But if I look at it from another point of view, it did take me 26 years to create all of that!
However, I feel that with the help of the method of this meditation, I can continue to discard the false pictures in my mind. And one day, will have completed the journey towards my true self. And I definitely recommend the method to anyone and everyone looking for a spiritual practice. Thank you!
more information www.meditationusa.org
