It certainly seems like you got a lot out of meditation. My own practice is similar (20 mins most days for a few years and 130 days consecutively now), but I th

It certainly seems like you got a lot out of meditation. My own practice is similar (20 mins most days for a few years and 130 days consecutively now), but I think in a different Zen tradition. I've found in practice that I have most success when I treated emotional highs and lows as irrelevant. The books I've read all suggest that the point is to focus on ordinary life, not search for ever deeper trance states, and my experience has been that trance states are transient while ordinary life goes on always. Taking my meditation in that direction has tended to make it gentler, lower-impact, but longer-lasting. At least it feels that way. If you ever meditate differently, it would be interesting to see you contrast any new effects with the ones you've already experienced. I found your essay fascinating, by the way, particularly your precision in analysis. It's what I might call first-person science :)