Hello Eli,
first of all: great that you’re here! Congrats on starting a meditation practice.
I might be mistaken, but training the mind appears to be the wisest thing homo sapiens sapiens can do.
So: keep at it, you’re totally in the right place and doing the right stuff!
Let’s see if I can be of some assistance here:
1. The issue with your former housemate and the other person:
I’m coming here from an evolutional/psychological standpoint (see “Why Buddhism is True” by Robert Wright for further reference).
The disturbance/pain you’re experiencing seems to originate in the social rejection/exclusion you’re experiencing.
After all you “lost” friends/aquaintances. Now being the social animals that we are, falling in discgrace with our fellow humans
is something that does not feel good for us. After all, we thrive on social connections.
So if I were to estimate, I’d say this pain might stay with you for a while.
As far as issues to deal with: Forgiving yourself? Look at it this way: there’s actually nothing to forgive (and nobody who actually needs forgiveness :))
The things that happened lay in the past (and you did all the appropiate atonement).
Rather than dwelling in what happened and what might be necessary to be done, use the pain as part of your practice:
Whenever the thoughts of the event/people comes to you (on or off cushion), it will probably come together with some emotion
– which in turn will manifest as a physical sensation: oberserve that and what it does to you.
It will be elusive and difficult in the beginning, and you may very well be dragged into the story of what happened and what you could have done differently and what you need to do now etc, etc (aka: you will “identify with the thought/emotion”).
But with time, you’ll get better at just watching the emotion arise as well as its effects.
So: make the pain not your enemy or your hindrance, make it an object of contemplation and study.
And I bet that interesting things will happen.
2: I really got no concrete idea on that one. Just some random thoughts: Bad sleep can be caused by wrong sleeping conditions: are your sleeping quarters ventilated? Did you take caffeine bevore sleeping (which is a bad idea)? Is it maybe too warm in your sleeping quarter? Stuff like that.
As with feeling worn out after a bad night: well that’s pretty natural. My own approach to sleepiness/gross dullness is taking a nap during the day.
About 30-40 minutes can work wonders.
Against short episodes of strong dullness on cushion I got good results by holding the breath:
After the outbreath I’d simply not breath in for a while (and concentrate on my heartbeat).
When my body starts clamoring for air, I’d start breathing very very shallowly for a little while
(which seems to satisfy the breathing reflexes whithout actually getting any air into your lungs).
And after some seconds more I’d finally breath in again.
That seems to flood the body with stress hormones and get you going again.
Has the downside of agitating the mind though, so if you overdo it, concentration still goes down the drain 🙂
3: Checking in: Yeah, me too. Never quite got that part. Kinda skipped it actually (I think).
What I did try to do was simply to evaluate very shortly how my mind was doing: Am I sleepy? Dull? Edgy?
Is my concentration stronger/weaker/narrower/wider than the last days?
After a while this evaluation will happen “automatically” – aka Awareness will take care of it. But you gotta “train” it first by looking at that stuff with Attention.
4: Same here. It gets better though: Meditation practice is all about positive reinforcement and habit building. Just give it time. Try to get on cushion every day. At the same time if possible. Make that “your” time: time to relax, heal, strengthen yourself.
And: reading about meditation is fascinating anyway, so no problem there 🙂
Hope that helps a little.
All the best!
Florian.
