It would be easier to roll up the entire sky into a small cloth than it would be to obtain true happiness without knowing the Self

Upanishads

When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger.

I often took out this anger on my first wife. After I had been meditating for about two weeks, she came to me and said, “ What’s going on?” I was quiet for a moment. But finally I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “ This anger, where did it go?” And I hadn’t even realised that it had lifted.

I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It’s suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within,  the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom.

Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to a filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vice grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.

From David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness & Creativity