Good Morning Pure Bliss!!
Meditation. It's funny, because for a practice that's been around for more than six thousand years, you would think it could be easily defined. But meditation is not easily defined. In fact, what exactly is meditation??
You could say that meditation is a practice to calm the mind. But for what purpose? There really is no easy answer, and despite the thousands of books available on the subject, and the many different kinds of meditative practice, you could be hard pressed to come up with a concrete explanation for exactly what meditation is and how to do it!
After years and years and years (damn, am I really that old) of traditional meditation, I have my own perspective. To me, meditation is an art, and the practice itself is different for everybody. And to me, meditation is a way to SEE your life. I use meditation now to feel myself in my life, in the events and experiences and relations I'm having, and how that seemingly "out there" reality is connected to my own inner state. But that's what meditation has BECOME for me.
In the beginning: When I first began to meditate as a daily on-going practice, oh...somewhere in the 1980's, I followed the strict traditional path of zen meditation. I would sit on a bare floor in zazen, breathe from the hara (about two inches below the navel), close my eyes and attempt to still my mind by ignoring every thought that came into my head. Talk about torturous, lol!
But it was!! And to me, the difficulty and discomfort was part of the process. I grew up with an alcoholic mother (the Joan Crawford type), and if I knew anything it was how to endure. So for no less than an hour a day, I would sit in that posture, and fight the war to still my mind. Meditation....no book I read ever described it as a process in Hell!
I employed techniques to still my mind: following the breathe, counting, mantra, and so on. After two years of daily practice, I could sit in zazen, and move my mind into a total blank state. No thought, or how they like to say, No Mind. And I was like okay....I'm sure at some point, the point of all this will become clear. Not really!! If there was a point, I must have missed it by not thinking. All that time fighting the "monkey mind", and it just slipped away. But did my life improve. I lived in hell, for that first year meditation was a hell, but wasn't it supposed to take me out of Hell? Well let's see... Calm and centered, I was. I could be in a burning building and keep my cool, no problem. Mother drunk and wielding a butcher knife (again), no problem. I could stay calm and centered and observe, "How interesting." But I began to wonder if that was really living? I mean, calm and centered, sure, but where was Happy? Where was Meaning? Where was Passion? No clue.
When I discovered audio entrainment in the later part of the 80's, I was like, "This is interesting." And instead of using it like traditional meditation, I decided to explore what was in my own head while listening to a tape. Well this opened up another dimension of Me. I had issues and demons and what not, and so many fears to explore, that were all still there, hiding behind that blank state of mind I had worked so hard to achieve, not to mention being so damn PROUD of that mental emptiness I could summon at will. So much for being empty, right!! I was filled to the brim with so much psychological bullshit, and I began to question who exactly was I.
That little phase into self-discovery is perhaps another long topic, but my point is this: I use meditation now, both traditional and entrainment, to examine and explore my own mindset, the terrain of my own psyche, and the direct casual relationship between my inner state, and reality "out there". My days of sitting in zazen are long gone. I sit on my sofa in the half lotus position. Yes, posture is important to help focus the mind, but a comfortable posture is even better. I don't live in a damn cave, and yes, I have furniture...might as well use it! And you are soooo right!! Audio entrainment would have been a HUGE benefit to help me slow down my mind in the beginning if I had used it!!
When we first learn to quiet the mind, the thing is, thoughts don't really increase. Those thoughts are already there, and the quieter the mind, the more they emerge into awareness, linked by a symbolic associative process, that gives the appearance of thinking thinking thinking. The mind is always thinking. It doesn't stop. What so many people learn to do in meditation, what I leaned to do, is to turn your attention away from that thinking. It's a trick, really, and not a beneficial one in my opinion. The thoughts are not the problem. The thoughts tell you what the problem is. And I spent years ignoring my own problems. So it's an interesting dichotomy that requires a unique balance, and that balance is as different and unique as each and every person.
I'm happy to share Pure Bliss, so any questions, please feel free to ask.
Topic: Experimentation (Read 156 times)
