Link to meditation, guided by Ajahn Brahm.
Came to the meditation quite relaxed, I had look at emails etc. before starting the meditation and there were no things that took my attention away with any intensity. I often wonder about doing that – I want to just get into the day with waking and maybe a shower, a hot drink and then the meditation, but I almost always exhibit the 'monkey mind' and delve into work issues by opening emails or take my mind to personal or political matter by looking at Facebook or Newspapers. I feel these things distract me from a potentially peaceful start to the day and progress with meditation by causing the meditation to take longer to get into after such current, western, middle-class preoccupations.
At the the start of today's meditation I felt that a hinderance was the fact that I was using the meditation simply as a means to continue with my usual practice of living, but with added relaxation, like giving myself a pat on the back for doing meditation without really approaching any of the benefits of it beyond the most shallow. So once that popped into my mind I put some distance between the thoughts and encouraged myself to let my mind rest. In effect I suppose I brought some kindness to the mindfulness, seeing that my mind never usually really got to rest, to be quiet, and I let myself believe I could do that. The result was some more appreciable silence than other recent meditations and though thoughts did come occasionally again I thought to distance myself from them by letting there be some quiet, not needing the thoughts to come, letting them stop. "Not now," I was saying to myself, "let the meditation really be a time of rest."
So I did sense some more depth to the meditation, unfurling the outer petals without consciously attempting to relax my body much, but letting it happen, being aware of it distantly. I pictured the petals opening, and when my body prompted me to move, the petals closed from the outside, no matter the fact that other peace was going on – the body called strongly.
In this way the meditation progressed, then at the end I felt the breath deeply just as we were being ask to come out of the meditation, so I stayed with it a little longer to see if I could feel the awareness of the breath stay prominent, but it did not stay and a few minutes later came out of the meditation myself. I feel relaxed and that I may have some insight that, if i can apply it, might give me some more depth to my meditations in the future.
Re the medical procedure and trying to enter a meditation under sedation, well, no, that was a non-starter. Propofol allowed nothing but a jump from one moment to another :-).
No comments:
Post a Comment