Existential Anxiety

It would be very interesting to do a really large study to find out if this is common. Once people advance well along the path of meditation, how common is what I will call existential anxiety?

Anxiety is a common problem, apparently, in our culture. Lots of people report it, to the point of having “anxiety attacks,” which can be debilitating. Meditation seems like a very obvious aid in dealing with anxiety. It assumes that one can find a relatively quiet, calm place, which should help reduce anxiety all by itself. If you cannot do that at all, you may have a bigger problem you need to deal with.

Once your meditation practice is well developed, you can meditate pretty much anywhere. Meditation takes over your life, such that you may sort of feel as if you are meditating all the time.

But not if you have a lot of anxiety. Once you have a quiet, calm place to sit, and focus your attention on your breathing for a while, you may also in the immediate term, see an increase in your anxiety, since anxiety is always just a mental state, and the point of meditation is to watch your mind, your thoughts and your mental state, to learn what is going on.

But even after you may have calmed any daily anxiety you feel as the result of your situation or common events in your life, you may also find a much more deep seated, persistent anxiety that I am calling existential anxiety and I wonder if it is not just part of being human.