It's a hard feeling I'm experiencing from time to time, and seems to be a common human theme (it does sound similar to a mid-life crisis). Moreover, it seems to

It's a hard feeling I'm experiencing from time to time, and seems to be a common human theme (it does sound similar to a mid-life crisis). Moreover, it seems to be a phase in (Vipasanna) meditators who dive in deep into the meditation. All of your life it's been about sensory and hedonistic pleasures, up until the point where you start realizing that they are repetitive, non-satisfactory, empty. The first noble truth of Buddha. What helped for me was a refresher of the evolution theory (Dutch book so no point recommending I guess), which suggests that you are here simply because you are here. There is no grand goal, no epic mission to fulfill, no gods to please. You are here because your parents were optimized for reproduction and raising children, who existed because their parents were etc. While this might seem depressing at first, I experience it to be very enlightening, as nothing indeed matters at all indeed. Things are what they are, nothing more, and thinking about whether it matters or not is hurting yourself (as it gets you into empty/unpleasant mind settings). I think the proceeding stage of both that attitude and meditators in a "local minimum of realization" is that you start sitting back more, just observing. Enjoy the sound of the leaves during your hike, and instantly forgetting that when the sun hits you and you starting observing the heat. When the thought of "noting matters" hits you just observe the thought instead of letting it take you, it's bound to go away again anyways. It's a very basic way of handling the world, but extremely satisfying in a way that sensory pleasures aren't. On an intellectual level, it helped to read a wide variety of philosophy & religions from people who seemed to have mastered the "art of living" (if you can call it such a thing). A rabbi predicating hate is a completely different one from a rabbi predicating love and kindness, even if they teach the same scripts. Below the surface, they all point towards the same "thing" that is in line with what I tried to explain above. I hope it's in some way useful. Sorry if it's kind of vague, it's a concept that is hard to put into words :) Couple of books that helped me: - The unthethered soul - Core books of taoism (lieh-tzy, chaung tzu, lao tzu) - Yoga sutras - Buddhism (sutra's and thich nhat hanh in example) - Stoicism (marcus aurelius, seneca)