Candol, excellent question!
This is often a point of confusion for folks. The purpose of meditation is not to create warm, fuzzy feelings, or to be calm. The purpose is to become mindful of what we are experiencing in the moment and to see the mechanisms at work.
So if we are nervous, twitchy, angry, stressed out, that is the perfect time to see to observe what stress is, what underlies it, what happens if one focuses on the bodily feeling of stress, and what happens if one focuses on the mental aspects of stress.
I like looking at difficult feelings like stress as perfect lab subjects. If we take a curious interest in those events, then we can learn much about them.
The challenge, of course, is not getting caught up in the stories our minds create, getting on the marry-go-round of thinking that tugs you out of mindfulness. But if you can give yourself wiggle room, step back just a bit, you can see what a trouble-maker the mind likes to be.
If we are calm and nothing is really going on at the moment, and we sit and we feel peaceful, that's all well and great. But we learn the most when we take the opportunity to sit during difficult times, when we are stressed, when we are upset or angry. That is when the selfing process is at it's highest and you can observe those processes and see how it creates that strong sense of self that causes us so much suffering!
Even more fascinating is when you can see under the self, and see the events of DA as Linda described so well in her series.
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Difficulty settling down to meditate when under pressure
