It becomes hard for me to manage college and meditation at the same time.

[Loveherbs]

Meditation makes me quite a dead guy when I'm among friends. I think that meditation is making me loose my past personality. I am more quite and peace loving guy now.but ihave to manage my college life also. Plz advice me.

[Aeran]

Could you clarify what you mean by "dead guy among friends" and so on? And what kind of meditation are you practicing?

 

I've found that my practices, if anything, have made me more outgoing, confident and social. But they've also changed my social life in that I'm less interested in the random junk people do to fill their time (eating/drinking/casual sex/parties/clubs/etc), which has precipitated some big changes in how I spend my time and who I spend it with. That adjustment just comes as part of realizing the wider nature of the spiritual universe.

[Nikolai1]

Meditation makes me quite a dead guy when I'm among friends. I think that meditation is making me loose my past personality. I am more quite and peace loving guy now.but ihave to manage my college life also. Plz advice me.

Good meditation will make you slowly aware that there is a part of you that is entirely happy and at peace, regardless of what happens on the outside.  This part of you will then grow and grow until it dominates who you are.  When you are already content and at peace, your motivation to chase and get things will be hugely reduced.

 

Most of the world's activity, including industry and the college degrees needed to perform this industry are based on the assumption that there are things on the outside worth getting.

 

It is possible that you no longer believe that the stuff your friends do is worthwhile.  The urge to get drunk is a really good example.  The peace and expansion that comes from alcohol is already subtly yours as a result of the meditation.  It's like you have an intravenous drip of vodka, slowly subtly entering your bloodstream.  It takes the edge off the desire to stand at the bar doing shots.

 

The same goes for nearly all of our pleasure seeking.  When you no longer need pleasure on the outside, you become demotivated to participate in nearly everything that makes sense to normal people.  Even going for a nice chat over coffee can lose its appeal.  A lot of the conversation in this world is mutual reinforcement of ego identity.  We talk in order to gain reassurance of our ego both through positve affirmation of our actions, and distancing and negative judgement of actions that aren't like ours.  

 

When we are no longer interested in small talk it is because we have a deep and stable sense of who we really are.  But this means that we are really becoming distant from normal human behaviour.  This process is simultaneously satisfying and deeply distressing.  In our lower moments it can be very frightening to find ourselves drifting out of our niche.  We don't know where we are headed, and more often than not, we are headed there alone.

 

At your age, it is very, very common to not drift off too far.  You'll stop the meditation and return back to the fold for another decade or so.  This is absolutely fine and if you do this you won't feel any guilt, and the idea of yourself as 'spiritual' will probably stay with you anyway.

 

Many don't return to their practice until they are retired, or at least financially stable.  Others find the call too strong and have to somehow juggle their deepening practice with being in the world as well.  In these cases, work must be found that isn't incompatible with all the insights about your true identity.  For example, if you are simpy caring for old people it is easy to carry on when you start to see others as aspects of yourself.  This is harder if you are a salesman who must deceive the customers a bit if you want to get good commission.

 

Only you will learn what path you take, but it's all good so try not to worry too much!

Edited September 8, 2015 by Nikolai1