Just reading this gave me anxiety.
What difference will it make anyways after you're dead?
I did the same in my 20s, but then slowly, my interest in sitting for hours a day, long retreats, faded. Not sure why, the experience itself is obviously deep, but it became a kind of attachment like coffee, and gradually I returned to the world.
> If I worship something, it's this moment
Wonderfully put.
May I ask, if you didn't sit, would this moment cease? Put differently, without practice would something be lost?
It seems relatively common that people who work full time can do 2 hours if that's really what they want to do. You cut down other activities, like watching Netflix etc.
Then I traveled around a little bit and visited zen monastery and started to train there with a teacher.
My starting motivation was philosophical and academic interest. I was curious how it affects the mind. Then I did it because it seemed so hard to do, mind seemed like a buggy device I had no control over. I also had self improvement goals at some point. And feeling balanced is a good feeling.
But there is no way I can justify the amount of time I spend meditating with any of those. Meditation teachers say that first you start to work with meditation, then it starts to work with you. The whole view of the world changes.
I'm completely secular humanist but meditation has turned into spiritual practice. If I worship something, it's this moment. Asking why I meditate is like asking why people go surfing. Staying in the moment and balancing on the wave between the past and the future is not a activity you do for gaining any other goals. Being alive and experiencing the raw existence is something you sacrifice other things in your life.