If anything, meditation gives you a bigger view, it takes you out of the small circle of individual consideration where your love for your own family leads to a larger circle and helps everything become part of your life. You really feel most happy when others are happy.
The whole idea of selflessness isn't a route to a miserable martyrdom and holiness, it gives you a million ways to be happy because you aren't just reliant on being happy because your own life looks good.
You might not see any connection between meditation and selflessness. You might think that because for a time each day you are removing yourself from others when you meditate, you are cutting yourself off but it isn't like this, what happens is that you give yourself a chance to rethink things, you give yourself a space to see that your own life is a tiny spark in a huge universe and that joining it is much more fun than staying separate.
You gain bliss if you aim for it and then you want to share it.
I was in a meditation session this weekend, and upon starting the meditation the tutor guided us into it by reminding us that there are many people all over the world meditiating at his moment, so just fall in with that universal stream of meditation. I found the instruction for my mind most liberating, as it took the effort and sole responsibility out of it. There was a sense of joining in, to the unifying nature of it. Yes, a selflessness, as you succinctly put it.
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