There is something about meditation that at times may seem counterintuitive.
Like so many people, originally I sought out meditation as a way to deal with personal angst, suffering, 'bad feelings' that seemed to have me at their mercy. I was unable to feel good about myself and about life, I felt I didn't belong; and somehow I knew the solution lay in finding a way to connect to the Higher Self, or the soul, as I thought of it--the place within that I believed was there but that I rarely was able to contact. I had many interesting experiences as I went here and there, seeking answers, some of which were simply goofy, but some of which worked to a degree to soothe my troubled self. None of them, however, gave me regular access to the deeper experience of Self that I wanted. Then I found Vedic meditation, and that no longer was the case. It did not 'cure' me instantaneously, but it did give me a repeatable experience of that place that began to heal me. The basis of life is a field of bliss, this meditation allowed me to renew my connection with it and life began to feel different. As we rest deeply in our meditation, we begin to let go of the stresses we've been carrying, these overwhelming experiences of life that have been imbedded, as it were, into our body that keep us from the fullest experience of life; and with their unwinding, we gain each day at bit more of ourselves. But also we are faced with the uncomfortable body sensations that accompany their unwinding. Each stress, as it releases from our body, feels a bit like it felt going in. Release a stress of anger, we feel angry. Release sadness, we feel sad. Our ego mind, doing what it has learned to do, makes sense of these feelings for us by assigning them to the various facts of our life. 'Of course you're angry. So-and-so was disrespectful to you.' 'Who wouldn't be sad if they've had a life like yours.' Etc. And this is where we intervene, reminding ourselves that these thoughts and feelings are stress release phenomena, that by the time we're having the thoughts and feeling the feelings the stresses already have been released in our body and it's our task simply to let them go; and then we come to our senses. We get present. Present moment awareness, without speculation or indeed any thought about these feelings and what we might need do about them. We let them go. If we think about this, it's an amazing gift. These stresses that have plagued us and held us back, some of them for decades, are being removed from our body in the most benign way possible. We don't even have to know what they're about. Nature is taking care of it for us. It's our job to allow. But there's something very tricky here, which is that nature communicates with itself through a system of charm and aversion. We are drawn to those places and situations that move us in the direction of evolution, and we find ourselves averse to those that move us away from evolution. Now we are releasing stresses, it can be uncomfortable, to say the least. Here is how one meditator described it recently: "Bloody awful. Like poison is being leached out of you one drop at a time." Here's the counterintuitive part. Now we have the challenge of seeing this uncomfortable thing as good news, as movement in the direction of evolution. You're sad? Feel like you're falling apart? Yes, I know it's not fun, but congratulations. You're starting to change. And not just change like putting on a different pair of shoes, but change like you will be someone you have never been before. Someone you will be able to love and respect and enjoy spending time with. The someone nature would have you be, giving of yourself the way nature would have you give of yourself. The release of stresses can be uncomfortable. The resultant lightness of being is sublime. When we find ourselves overwhelmed by the feelings of stress release, it is our job to identify ourselves as something other than these feelings and let them go. This is the beginning of discovering who and what we truly are. Today I will remind myself that I am releasing stresses, and I will get present to the beauty of my life in the moment. 
Swing and Sign, Studio City CA
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