I don't know how you guys manage to keep up this practice all the way to stream entry, much less arahatship.

I'm at a point in my own practice that feels like I'm standing at the apex of a very complex intersection and I can't decide which road to take. I'm losing a lot of confidence in my ability to get enlightened at all and wondering if I shouldn't just chuck the whole endeavor out the window.

I hit A&P once a couple years ago, but I haven't been able to get anything close to that since. It came on kind of suddenly. I wouldn't even say I gained any kind of insight from it. Just a lot of (frankly terrifying) kundalini activity, and something of a glow that lasted about a week. Since then I suspect I've been caught up in the dark night, but I'm at a complete loss as to how to get out.

I've tried noting, but I find it exhausting. Even very light noting gets very aggravating for me after a while. Mantra becomes similarly exhausting because of the repetetiveness. Koan training (which triggered my initial A&P but hasn't done much good for me since) is irritating for a combination of the above two reasons. I've thought a lot about it and I think the problem I have with these techniques is that I'm already a very cognitive person, though not terribly sensory- or detail-oriented. So noting becomes overwhelming, and mantra and koans just make me too antsy.

On the other hand, I seem to have better luck with styles like shikantaza, self-inquiry, and contemplative prayer. Some of my most interesting meditation experiences recently came from following Aleister Crowley's instructions on asana, which are basically just to train oneself to sit perfectly still, not moving a muscle, for up to one hour (so far I've made it as far as thirty minutes). The problem here is that my meditation will be great for about a day or two, then feel like chewing on tin foil the next day.

Now that I'm writing all of this down and starting to put some things in perspective, it's starting to sound like whining to me. Of course, the practice is difficult. It's not supposed to be a cakewalk. But I've hardly got any positive feedback to keep me going at all anymore. I feel like I'm getting more antsy and neurotic as a result of my meditation than otherwise, but at the same time just patient and endurant enough to deal with that without breaking down.

Meditation feels like a chore that doesn't offer any kind of reward anymore. I've tried focussing  on improving my concentration so as to better approach insight, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere with that, either. Jhana remains perpetually out of reach. I don't think I've ever gotten it. Or, if I have, and it's possible, it was so light and vague and difficult to hold onto that it wasn't even worth the effort trying to get.

In my life outside of formal meditation, I feel like I'm constanty running on fumes. Just low energy. Lost interest in things I used to be passionate about. Little motivation to pursue those passions that do remain. My mind is either in total chaos, or totally dull. I feel like I've lost most of my creativity, which, as a writer, is pretty devastating.

I don't understand this. I don't know how much of this is the dark night, how much is run-of-the-mill depression, and how much of it is just me doing it wrong. It's enough to make me desperately want to get to stream entry and lessen this load of suffering at least a little bit, but at the same time the wish to do that isn't motivation enough to actually get it done, because practice itself is just utterly demotivating now, and all I have to go on is word-of-mouth.

Thoughts? I have no one else to turn to on this matter.

Hello, Andrew,

I read your post and the only thing I can say that might possibly help is that my Core Practice releases or removes things from my mind, and I compensate with before and aft practices that allow me to consciously fill in for what the mind loses during my Core Practice -- what I decided to give up and to not have bother me anymore, or some subtle letting go.

My Core Practice is a discreate, and I compensate with creative exercises and this has kept me from crashing (or snacking to compensate).  

I'm interested to read other response.

 

Thank you for the response.

That is helpful. I think a Core Practice is something that I am missing. Often I sit and I'm not sure if I want to try just sitting, or focusing on my breath, or any other number of techniques. Unfortunately for me, I've always been an indecisive person, so usually I'll just pick the practice that I'm leaning most towards at the moment, and a minute or two into the sit I want to do something else.

Thetre being so many different techniques and practices it's understandable to try this and that.
Add to that the mind's own resistance and I'm amazed anyone sits at all -- even myself - what got into me to do this?

After several years of this and that but never totally giving up I found this forum, got more dedicated and developed Rules of Practice as I'm learning about how my mind works.  It does seem to take years of study and practice.

Have you ever sat a retreat?  If you do decide you want to continue (and if you've crossed the A&P, you will have a strong inclination to continue) then it can give your practice a big boost and push you into new territory and help you master old territory.  My advice would be to go sit a Goenka vipassana course.  If you find noting too cognitive, you might find the Goenka body-scanning method more to your liking.  Even after discovering noting and finding it really effective, I still use scanning as my bread and butter.  Or if there is another method that you've heard of that strikes your fancy, then go check it out.

I totally know what your talking about meditation being a chore.  I think a lot of things had to go right for me to get to the point where I see the value of meditation.  One thing that helped was slacking off and then restarting my practice.  When I slacked off I could see myself getting reactive and angsty, then when I started up again I could see myself getting less so.  I've yet to get stream entry, but I've seen enough proof in pudding to motivate me to continue.  

Good luck,
T

Used to be that I had a pretty solid practice of basic breath meditation, which kept me calm and serene. And I'd go through periods of slacking off, then come back and the difference was remarkable. Nowadays the difference is a lot more subtle. My meditation doesn't seem to make as big of a difference. Which can be disheartening, but I'm hoping it's also just part of the process.

I have thought about taking a Goenka retreat at some point. I know a guy who goes up to one a few times a year, I think. The main issue there is just getting the time off.

This happens, it is impermanent, just keep up a daily practice as best you can.

If one has two sticks, and wants to build a fire, they have to keep rubbing the sticks together, by rubbing the sticks together, persistently and consistently, eventually enough heat will build up to start a fire.  But, the minute one stops rubbing the sticks together the sticks cool down, and one has to start over, maybe not all the way, but some.  Day by day practice is like this, missing a day and the "sticks" cool down.

And, don't be afraid to give the mind a little mental break, watch a movie, read a book, play a video game, music, whatever, then when the mind is a little more relaxed, then do some formal meditation.  Sometimes, I do some ten minute sits, and do several of them, it still seems to add up somehow for progress, and is less stressful.  Get a calendar journal and write down your sits in minutes, this motivates me, and holds myself accountable, and you can look back and see your effort on paper.

And there is no "bad" sit.  Sometimes the mind just does its thing.  Usually when this happens, I "write off" the first sit, then do a "fun" sit later, a sit with no expectation, just sitting, the second one seems to go better.

And, lastly, progress is sometimes slow, but it is happening, we are just unaware it is happening, there are changes taking place, maybe noting speed is increasing by milliseconds, how can one notice that?  Or maybe tranquility is just around the corner, just by bring the attention back to the obect of meditation one more time might be just what the mind needed for to hit it's new level of consciousness.

Meditation works, it is being scientifically proven effective, and your probably more experienced that you are giving yourself credit for anyway.

later

Psi Phi

Thank you. I think that's just the thing I need to hear.

Doing a bunch of smaller sits that add up to a longer session sounds like the sort of thing that would probably boost my morale enough to get my practice back into a satisfying motion. I'll have to give it a try. Also the calendar journal thing. I do keep a record of (most) of my sits, though it's more focused on what I did and how it went. A record that's more quantitative than qualitative may help me step up my game.

Hrm -- did you ever know what you were doing? And what does success as a meditator look and feel like? Now might be a good time to revisit your expectations. Consider this meme that popped up here awhile back:



There's a kind of radical re-contextualization that happens as you get a feel for the cycles, where you finally stop flinching against "negative" phenomena in a deeply reflexive and aversive way and instead begin opening up to the larger lesson at hand. You learn to steer into uncertainty and bewilderment, in the same way a ship on high seas keeps its bow pointed into the waves. In fact, some totally twisted part of you might even start to enjoy the ride.

Also: being a particular kind of meditator with a certain kind of practice meant to produce a very special thing sounds like a whole lot of pressure. In truth, the full extent of your responsibility as a meditator is to show up and be present. Whatever else is happening behind the scenes can safely be considered above your pay grade. Want to practice contemplative prayer? Fine, show up and be present with that experience. Want to note? Great, show up and be present with that experience. There's a kind of hands-off simplicity to the whole thing that one can really open up and relax into.

You hit the nail right on the head. No doubt I put a lot of pressure on myself to achieve something very specific, then get frustrated when I'm not even close. Which is probably why a more shikantaza-like practice tends to work for me more. Maybe that's just the shadow side of goal-oriented practice, and I need to balance my yang with a bit more yin.

(Interestingly, in my daily life outside of formal practice, I find I need to balance my yin with more yang. I wonder if there's any correlation between overcompensating in meditation and undercompensating in daily life, or if that's just me?)

Thank you. Simply hearing back from a community of people who know what I'm talking about is already motivating me to get back on the cushion.

I'm more of a direct path person so stream-entry isn't as big a deal for me but to constantly add refinement of understanding and mindfulness no matter which method you use is essential.

It sounds like you're caught in expectations and now have to refine your meditation practice further and rediscover the joy that is in it. People usually get to stream-entry and beyond because they are consistent in practice and develop strong momentum without a constant measuring of progress and REFINE the practice to workout the kinks.

To me the practice is all about adding more nuance and consistency and daily life practice being the key. Sitting and meditation, when I was letting go of jhanas and starting to do vipassana, showed clearly that I needed to note during the day and even at work. A lot of shifts occurred at work with my eyes open.

To get out of the dark night you have to get refined and look at the 4 foundations of mindfulness and start noting more detail. The foundations create a nice list of things that are there for many people and so very likely you will have those experiences and should note them. There's usually something that is missing that you aren't noting like "analyzing" "strategizing" "rehearsing" "catastrophizing" "doubt" "confusion" etc. Make sure to note mind-states like "sadness" "boredom" "dullness" "dissatisfaction" "wanting" "laziness" "restlessness" "equanimity" "desire" "aversion" "measuring" "evaluating" "critiquing". What you note is registered in your brain with a label of understanding and you're not likely to cling to it. To note delusion it's good to understand the interdepedence of objects and how our consciousness needs objects to be conscious. The middle path between 100% permanent and 100% nihilism is treating reality as real but under the 3 characteristics. Objects are made up of sub-atomic particles but appear to us as simplified objects to like or dislike.

I found that a lot of the emptiness talks from Rob Burbea have helped me enormously:

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5031205

For a direct path person doing a Shikantaza practice and treating all experiences as rebounding off a mirror of awareness/consciousness/knowing is the first big step towards developing strong equanimity. The "mirror" doesn't react and all emotions and experiences can arise and pass away off of it like a non-stick pan. The mirror is completely non-judgmental. Any projections of judgement on it are thinking pretending to be consciousness. This created a lot of reduction of stress but as usual there's much more refinement necessary.

As the mirror benefits get habituated some of the downsides are noticeable. There's a tendency to cling to the mirror by batting away distraction (cleaning the mirror of thoughts) and by thinking there's a location of this mirror at the back of the head.  To see that consciousness is interdependent is to see that ALL experiences are consciousness-experience. Or to put it another way, everything is consciousness, so that all sensations that create a sense of location is just more sensations. Even depth perceptions and 3D qualities of vision are just qualities inseparable from consciousness. You can note "space", "object", "remembering", "impressions" without having to push or bat anything away.

Another downside to Shikantaza is laziness. It's so easy to get caught in stories and not notice detail without the noting feedback loop that keeps you honest. I still use noting instead of 100% bare awareness. Find a balance that moves you forward to more understanding of your experience.

There's also the sense of time. Another good practice is to notice how objects happen in time and that measuring how good or bad these objects will be for us in the future or ruminating how they were in the past are still in the subjective conceptual world. If you look for a duration for the present moment, any duration can be subdivided into smaller and smaller fractions for eternity so the reality of our remembering and projections in the future are really called into question.

Meditation can be a chore if you note to bat thoughts away. Another trick is to pay attention to thoughts and watch how they feel before, during, and after they subside. When paying attention the thoughts should be painless but when in aversion towards thoughts, a sense of separation appears (which happens with all aversion). The intention to pay attention can have lots of hidden stress/aversion. This leads to the understanding that if you noticed your mind wandered then you're already back. There's no need to add stress with beliefs like "there shouldn't be a wandering mind."

Some of the lack of interest you talk about does sound like depression and the dark night should feel crappy but also have a flavour of freedom from habits. That's how I delineate the two. Depression always felt different and more dull and a scary feeling that nothing is interesting in this world. I'm so far away from that now so if I can get through then so can you. I suspect that if you let your mind wander wherever it wants to go (Daniel's advice really helped me in this area) your brain will start finding interest, desire, and wonder again. This is why it's good to make an assessment about what your deep goals are and look at the short-term habits that are getting in the way. This is the liberation we need to seek out and the main goal is to find out what contribution we want to make in this life. This requires lots of thinking but if you're paying attention with bare awareness you can add more and faster thinking and still be okay.

Right Effort: Let go of unskillfullness, prevent unskillfullness from arising, cultivate skillfullness, and sustain. I used the Right Effort instructions to push my intentions in better areas. It's been a help but there's still more. LOL!

Looking at intentions (the feeling of "going to do" "about to do") before actions zeros in on the most deep conditioning because it's what happens before you do your actions and actions are remembered for future impulses of consciousness to repeat. Learning to let go of intentions can start to bring some control back into your life. I still have more practice to do because any habitual intentions are so quick that they appear at the same time as the action. I have to increase mindfulness to control actions to prevent unskillfulness. Yet pushing against habits/preferences makes the brain uncomfortable/cortisol/stress. How can I break through this barrier

Finally I found the 4 yogas in the Moonlight Mahamudra book. I read this years ago but fucking didn't understand it and got lost. These are the instructions that I paraphrased that have refined the practice further for me and reduced stress further and has given me an inkling of more deeper freedom than I thought was possible. 

• Welcome experiences - This prevents noting and equanimity inclinations from being half-hearted and full of aversion.
• Maintain awareness without examining it - ALL measurements can have a danger of being self-measurements.
• Do not view appearances as deficient - Let go of preferences and even purposefully put yourself into growth activities that are different than short-term preferences. Welcoming alleviates much of the stress of doing non-habitual actions.
• This is no meditation or meditator - This is better understood when the top three are followed because self-referencing and measuring progress is not happening.

And now as of today I found a nice Gil Fronsdal talk that's already creating some help by pointing out a constant gratitude and treating things with importance:

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/5119.html

It's very easy for equanimity to include a whole bunch of neglect and in the extreme a sort of nihilism. By putting love and care into what's going on in the present moment creates a palpable feeling of grace that I like.

So I just dropped a bunch of jewels and pearls of dharma that has nothing to do with "getting stream-entry" that you can use and should bring back some of what you lost in rewarding meditation experiences (and I mean this as a daily life practice more than a sitting practice).

Good luck!

Nice threadI felt like that for years. It got particularly tough after I crossed the A&P and spent an entire summer practicing samatha-only 2 hours a day without results--while DN'ing. But at that stage I had the technique down and I persisted, and over the following 3 months started sporadically entering them. Eventually my brain seemed to get the picture and I suddenly found I could call up any of them with ease. SE came remarkably quickly after that and I suspect it had a lot to do with having already laid down the pathways to the 4th jhana.

Unless your mind is particularly restless and flighty, I'd seriously consider taking that route. I've never come across a long-term, pre-SE DN'er on this site who can call up the 4th jhana at will. See my post here for pointers, Ian And's guide, and the Practical Aspects of Establishing Mindfulness.

A lot of great advice shared on this thread; I'll offer my two cents.

It's really tough to meditate when thoughts-and-feelings are being taken as a solid seperate self who can 'do' the meditation. Yet this is where we all begin. The whole premise (that the true nature of things is allready perfect (or perfectly empty and impermanent), yet we are obviously suffering, and nothing 'I' DO can resolve this conflict) is inherantly problematic.

So it can be really helpful to commit to a simple basic approach. For me this means initially paying some attention to getting into a stable posture, letting breathing breathe, and having an open, curious fresh attitude. Starting by returning to the breath and posture whenever noticing I'm caught up in thoughts/feelings can be very grounding. Gradually appreciating how sitting is very dynamic-- blood is pumping, balance is dynamic; how the wind is blowing outside and the birds are chirping and the cars are going by and the light is shifting in the room etc. and all that is happening naturally. Appreciating the vast context in which 'I' am sitting and how it is all going on naturally. After a while of shifting attention away from thinking-feeling process into the broader deeper context of being alive, awake, breathing right here in this room with all these activities allready occuring within and around me in a natural way, gradually it becomes more obvious that the thinking-feeling process is also occuring in just such a natural way, just like weather. When the whole scene-- thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and all the events occurring around one are seen as just happening naturally, there is a very subtle yet distinct sense of interconnection and spontaneity. Then the thinking-feeling process can be seen not to constitute a solid self. The whole process as I described it here is designed to start out in the opposite direction from a goal-driven practice so it can be very helpful if that goal-drivenness is leading to a sense of staleness, frustration, etc. This is a sort of alternative approach that emphasises returning to naturalness, to what is allready the way things are, rather than one of driving forward through states and stages. Of course the punch line is that doing things this way will lead to an unfolding of stages of awakening.

"You" don't have to know what needs to happen next (which road to go down). "You" don't really need to know anything. Seeing how "You" as a thinking-feeling being are situated in this broader deeper context of just breathing, just sitting, everything around "you" just happening, that thinking-feeling "self" that has goals and gets frustrated and bored just is seen as more weather happening on its own. It can be a big relief. And it can be a well of insights which transform the baseline of how experience functions.

Richard writes:
"Some of the lack of interest you talk about does sound like depression and the dark night should feel crappy but also have a flavour of freedom from habits. "

What I'm getting from what you wrote is that the Dark Night is the experience of death of ego;  sometimes I experience embarrassment, depression, disorientation, tears, etc (but not for long) along with a realization, "I don't have to be-do-have that anymore".  The intensity of the experience depends on how invested I was.   It has never been a long extended period however so until you wrote this I never understood what was meant by "Dark Night" -- "why are these people suffering so much ?", I kept wondering.  

If Dark Night is death of egoic mind, then I understand now and I simply had a disconnect with the term used here.

Would you agree that overall our practice activities should be fun, rewarding, etc.?  Yes, I passively open myself to re-experiencing some intense mental hang-ups, but the sit ends with me being better than I was going in, regards discreating fixed importances.

Rob Burbea's viewpoints are very interesting -- thank you for the link.

I don't know how much walking or other kinds of movement meditation you do, but it's a great complement to the sitting practice. It has helped me get unstuck in the past, especially when feeling caught in the mind or mind-states.

What clinging in the habitual sense is, is like a clenched fist in your mind. That feeling is how wired the brain is for certain activities. When the brain is not activating this clinging behaviour the wiring changes (it goes into atrophy) and that has an affect on how you feel much like letting go of a grip and feeling your hand throb (in this case it's your head and/or body). The sense of freedom is increasing but there's some withdrawal symptoms and most instructors like Joseph Goldstein say 100% of people have to go through this.  

This is also the reason why the dark night doesn't go away completely until there are no more insights to be had. The first time it happened for me it was an icky feeling all over the body but different than a flu, or depression or anything else. Maybe when I was addicted to coffee and went cold turkey did I feel something similar. I had smaller versions of that until I let go of aversion to a wandering mind. That was another big one that left me with some weird jaw pain and a desyncing of mental talk with actual speaking. It lasted some weeks but I returned to normal and an even better baseline.

When the mind (likely a stream-entry event of some kind) let go of a huge portion of the self-referencing habit it was a massive relief and yet everything was normal. I laughed. It was just a muscle tension that was starting up and let go permanently. All that's left is some deeper layers of selfing that come with seeing deficiency, indulging in preferences, treating objects with permanent existence.

I've done more a dry path than a wet path even though I can do 4 jhanas, but it may be possible to reduce some of these symptoms by having a stronger concentration practice.

So ultimately the death of the ego is really just death of addictiveness and it happens in layers because there are multiple selves based on the 5 senses plus thinking and multiple ways a self can be measured against criteria, which is just a survival mechanism related to social groups. The self can be as big as any narcissist can be and as small as a consciousness looking at an object in time and trying to decide if that object will be good or bad for a "me" in the future.

You seem to have a lot of advice here, so I don't want to add any complexity.  However, I think it's too common on here to assume everyone who posts about negative experiences is talking about the dark night.  If you don't believe you have hit any jhanas, and the energetic experience you are calling the A&P happened two years ago, it seems unlikely that you're experiencing meditation related problems.  Some questions to ask yourself: Did you already feel negative before your experience two years ago?  Has your negativity been related to specific things in your life?  Does your negativity seem existential (what is the meaning of life) or depressive (why is life so sucky)?

If you're genuinely depressed, noting thoughts and sensations isn't going to cure you.  You'll need to work with your emotions and do some cognitive behavioral therapy.  You don't need to give up meditation while doing this, but if you're already depressed and you increase your concentrtion ability, you could make things worse by directing your concentration at your negativity.

There are a number of things you can do at home on your own time to dig yourself out of depression.  Mainly, you need to identify the negative thought patterns (Life is dull.  I'm no good.  I'll never be happy. etc) and challenge them whenever they come up.  There are a number of traps in buddhism, like the three characteristics, that can justify depression.  You might think, "Yes, I can see very clearly that everything is unsatisfying."  But this isn't the point of the meditation.  Developing or maintaining aversion to things is just as clinging as wanting them.  What you are trying to find is a way out, and the way out is to understand, and dissassemble the negative thought paterns that feed those feelings.

It sounds like you are meditating with a sense of desperation, hoping it will solve your problems for you.  This is going to cause endless frustration.  Meditation is not going to magically remove habitual negativity - you have to do it manually.  Once you see that removing thought patterns works in a gradual way, though, you won't feel that desperation anymore because you can see it working in real time.  This will improve your meditation experience and you will probably make much faster progress.  In the suttas - the buddha actually says that a person should find a stable mind before attempting to meditate.  You have to be removed from the hinderances to attain a jhana - the jhanas don't remove you from the hinderances.  You see what I mean?

So the essential method is this: whenever you notice a negative thought, like "I'm never going to be happy," you challenge it with logic and bring yourself to the visceral understanding that it is not true.  You don't need to try to feel better, or struggle to change your mood.  You simply question whether your thoughts are true.  If you can find a person to talk to about these thoughts - even just a friend - they can give you a different perspective on them as well.

Another method that's helped me a lot is negative visualization.  It was used by the Stoics in ancient Greece, and also has applications in modern therapy.  In your situation, you could spend a little time each day imagining yourself in negative situations - like if you had your leg amputated, or you lost your job - and compare that to how your life is now.  This can give you a more positive perspective on things, and it also allows your imagination the freedom to present you with the things you fear most.  As you spend time confronting the worst your imagination can throw at you, you begin to realize that you really could handle any situation.  There is no reason to ruminate over negative posibilities and negative events because you will be capable of dealing with them when they happen.  The thing that's causing all your troubles is your imagination.  You imagine better times in the past or future, or you imagine negative possibilities and feel the need to rehearse for them.  You can stop these habits by letting the imagination run free and facing it calmly.  There really is nothing there, and the present moment we live in can be truely meaningful if we tame these mental wanderings.

That is some good advice Tao.

I will also add my input here. Coming from a place where I can relate to Andrew B's situation, almost word for word as it seems like I would have written it, reading advice such as this adds even more fear, anxiety, stress, and doubt to the situation.

Just like OP's, my event happened two years ago as well. I don't want to smear my personal history into this thread, as I have done all over this board already, but something pushed me to search and eventually find this forum.

Tao, I respect and appreciate your input. I just thought I would add, since I can relate to this situation, reading advice like this often leaves me feeling worse than before because I question whether or not I am actually on this path of awakening.

I don't know. It is kind of a bubble burster for my ego, because it makes all my problems seem a lot more mundane and even unrelated (more or less, at least) to the path. On the other hand, it's very much a relief for the same reasons, because dealing with regular mental stuff, CBT, etc. sounds a lot easier to do than pushing through it via mental noting or whatever.

Haha, well from what I've seen, there's no divide between feeling better and feeling better.  Maybe CBT sounds mundane because you guys haven't yet discovered what actual happiness is like.  I don't mean that as a dig, either.  I can say, quite honestly, that I didn't understand happiness until earlier this year when I made a real effort to dig myself out of the anxiety that's been hanging over me since childhood.  It turned out that's all I was really looking for from meditation.

Being truly happy shouldn't be underrated, and it's a goal you can achieve in the short term.

Also, don't look to me to diagnose your meditation stage - I'm not very experienced with that.  It just seemed from your post that you're dealing with at least some things that aren't related to meditation.  As long as you can identify the cause of a problem, the fastest way out of the problem is going to be to remove the cause.

If it makes you guys feel better, this kind of emotional awareness and balancing is also a major part of traditional Buddhism, it just isn't emphasized very much in the pragmatic dharma scene.  One of the folds of the path is to maximize skillful thoughts while minimizing unskillful thoughts.

EDIT: I feel like I should mention the "escape hatch" that I've found useful as well.  When you have a negative feeling, you don't actually have to do anything at all with it.  You don't have to try to make it go away, and you don't have to try to express it or let it out.  You can simply leave it alone completely.  It can be a major relief to remove this struggle - though it can be a bit difficult to understand completely at first.  I always called it "acceptance" and "letting go" so maybe those words can guide you there.

I highly recommend CBT but in conjunction with meditation it's better. CBT by the way is actually very hard because you have to treat it like meditation by constantly refreshing the understandings and beliefs when the old mental habits return. I've got some book reviews that will give you the highlights of how it works and I hope you can use it. It's also a good way to see which books you want to buy and there's enough info that the summary is often enough:

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5211785
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5036272
Willpower Guide

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5576267
Effortless Attention

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5552028
The Practicing Mind

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5005983
Meet your happy chemicals

These books have all helped me in the direction of conventional happiness and still do. They support the sila part of meditation and make it so much easier to understand the aim of meditation. CBT helps with mental peace but meditation gives a deeper peace than CBT.

Experiment and try things out.

Richard