Ah, well, that is dark night. I mean, as much as I can, with my own personal experience, judge from a short paragraph, you have written the most effective six lines I can think of. That is dark night, and stream entry is the way to go. (I'm assuming you have little or no meditation experience in what follows)
You can get to stream entry in two ways. A gradual, soft, friendly way, which takes a lot of time, or a powerful, hardcore, gung-ho way, which is a lot quicker for this particular goal.
For the first way, I suggest you learn a tai chi form, in a complete and committed way (with a knowledgeable teacher), and do it two times a day. This will make things better, although it may take a long time until you notice serious difference (say, 6 months to 1 year of regular bidaily practice). Eventually this gives you stream entry (a member of our forum, Chuck, got it this way). And it's so cool to do it in the park

For the second way, you can learn vipassana, mahasi noting style:
- If you aren't sure that this is what you want to do (that means finding out why you'd want to do it rather than just "do it because someone on a forum said you should"), then I suggest you do Tai Chi instead.
- Learn how to do mahasi noting. You can learn how in the book "Practical Insight Meditation" by Mahasi Sayadaw.
- Learn what to expect, get a frame of reference, read Daniel Ingram's Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (MCTB ).
- Learn what it means to remain reasonably equanimous with stuff, not to react very violently with more mental junk, even if you're going through a hard time. This is important, because you'll be changing your mind in deep places, and when working in these areas some weird stuff might come up. If you remain equanimous, these things will simply pass and you should be OK (everything just goes away, remember?
), if you don't, you can go nuts. - Learn it well enough that you can answer most of your own questions (like "what if I feel bored during meditation").
- Finally, go on retreat and resolve to attain stream entry, and get it.
You might feel drawn towards the hardcore approach, e.g., because it likely feels as if you "just need to get rid of the suffering right now," but a gradual approach to enlightenment has a few merits. It has the advantage of being more stable, and doing it hardcore is something you might find yourself regretting over and over during the more difficult phases. The hardcore approach will give you very clear and obvious evidence that you are really "changing your mind," as a lot of change can happen in a very obvious way in a short amount of time. Furthermore it might leave you with the ability to "keep it together" through almost any situation, as this ability will become a necessity during the hardest moments (read MCTB ).
With regards to your description: you seem to be having insights into impermanence and non satisfactoriness. I got those two, and yes they are horrible.
There are less-unfriendly ways of looking at impermanence and unsatisfactoriness. Impermanence, when you're in a good mood, feels like constant-renovation instead of constant-decay. Non-satisfactoriness kind of evens out things --- instead of believing you'll be happy when you "finally get That Thing I can't have", you know that "even if I get That Thing I wanted but can't have I still wouldn't be satisfied," which kind of sets makes it silly not to just be happy now, and have fun anyway ("if nothing satisfies, one might as well fuck it all and have a laugh").
These different takes on impermanence and unsatisfactoriness have been slowly developing for me over time, and they are not the result of philosophical consideration, they just seem to be what is left of these two insights when the physical and mental pain finally goes away.
And Eduardo, they
will go away with these practices. That is a common result of doing them, and you can expect that to happen.
I mean, relief is on the way.