It's important to set expectations. Meditation won't make you happy - and that's not the point of it. What it can do is let you be more present of mind, less pr

It's important to set expectations. Meditation won't make you happy - and that's not the point of it. What it can do is let you be more present of mind, less prone to flights of fancy or worries. It teaches you a practice where you look into yourself and actually face what's going on in there, and gives you some gentle coping mechanisms to help lay to rest intrusive thoughts and feelings that have started "looping" in you. So the goal of becoming "enlightened" should probably be read more as "unburdened" or even "undistracted" - it's freedom to experience the moment you are in more clearly with fewer distractions and "ticks". What you do with that freedom is up to you. And it's not a state you achieve once and for all, it's something you do again and again, both to wipe the slate clean, and to train your ability to do so. It's more like taking out the trash, or daily stretches to stay limber, and less like a religious awakening (those who claim otherwise are hallucinating or having a mental breakdown like the author of the post).