I was in a small group where there was the option to share but I realized that if I shared, I wouldn’t be doing this later: blogging.
We were supposed to talk about what we were struggling with — but I always interpret every question to be, “What highlights can you remember from this week? And how do they relate to your meditation practice?”
For people like me who for the larger part of my life, was too eager to do / become to meditate for squat — even the words “meditation practice” might be disappointing already!
WTF / Let’s optimize! GET OFF OUR
Anyway, that’s where I am at at present. I meditate now and I meditate some more. I do it with my husband, I do it with strangers, and it’s become this weirdly important facet of my life, and the lessons are quite different than what I expected. Unto itself, it’s a different thing than it seems.
Much like:
- Jesus.
- Beef.
Words frequently used to describe persons / meats to which is attached a wide range of applications, abuses, and lack of agreed upon standards of hygiene during personal encounter.
So. . .meditation is apparently about becoming more observant about the phenomena of thoughts and opinions and feelings such that you can know what you are feeling, and then also know that it will pass, and that you will still be there, respirating.
Meditation is about accepting the full range of human consciousness, with all its victories and discomforts and bringing it all into a flat open field of non-judgment, so that it can dissolve into the grass much like a dog turd on synthetically treated fibers, the good and the bad, in equal part dissolving, such that you don’t try to hold on to or suppress either — and this conservation of energy makes for someone who can chill out in the presence of all things happening, who can water all phenomena with their sprinkler of acceptance. 😉 In fair recognition that any certainty about the nature of any thing or instance or event is tomfoolery, that a staunch sense of cause and effect is an aspirational device of the ego!
Furthermore, apparently, through meditation, you can welcome the hostile, angry, bitter, sad emotions experienced in response to the conditions in your life, into the supple caverns of the quieted heart and send peace into the world as you acknowledge and witness your own pain and let it go. In your experience of yourself, fully received, breath by breath, you come away with knowledge of every human heart and with some luck. . .solidarity and empathy for all fellow human comrades.
During the sharing time during which I did not share:
I wanted to mention how I made space for Matt’s needs when we were fighting and didn’t demand relief through conversation, but was able to weep a few tears of discomfort and go to sleep knowing that we would talk in the morning.
I wanted to mention how I’ve lived in a sort of fear of my experiences past — and in fear of God — which this being the proposition. What is good for you, may feel terrible for you. And that the death of the self — while the greatest thing one can attain — doesn’t always come via rapture in the creative act of artist, musician, dancer — but that it sometimes comes through the annihilation of expectation, which. . .hurts. Especially when it comes to expectations related to your sense of basic cause and effect. The order of the universe in which you have some known position. I was comforted by the words I read yesterday in When Things Fall Apart — the idea that the kind of pain I experienced — was because I wasn’t hip to reality!! That my fundamental conceptions were wrong and withstood the pain of correction.
I wanted to note that I woke up with a deadly sniper ripping to shreds various free-agents in my path, and I could feel the mental shrapnel flying, and I stepped out of the way by saying to the machine gun, “You’re doing that again.” It was a clear demarcation between self and mind. I turned my attention to other things, like dishes that needed to be done, and the bullet spray quickly subsided.
I’m tired now. But I did write something and I’m glad.
Goodnight!
Alanna Lin Ramage
Chairmeowww
Sleepy
P.S. The last thing I wanted to note – is that the release of tension and anger – is the prerequisite for the receptivity and attention of meditation. I’ve come up with some methods.
Heh heh.
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