View Single Post
Old 10-31-2004, 04:17 PM   #5
Creature_of_the_id
 
Creature_of_the_id's Avatar
Dojo: Alnwick aikido club (UKAU)
Location: Newcastle, England
Join Date: Dec 2000
Posts: 217
England
Offline
Re: Meditation trouble

I have found that meditation is not so much a time thing as a perspective thing.

I had been meditating for years and not getting anywhere, I was getting a nice calm and relaxing experience each time but that was pretty much it.

then I had an experience that changed my perspective. The experience itself is not important, the change of perspective was, to me.

I used to meditate for a reason, I used to sit down to meditate in order to feel 'something' to reach some destination, sometimes i would meditate in order to relax.
In each of these cases, if I did not feel that something, if i did not reach the destination, if I did not find relaxation then I would feel like I had failed, that my mediation was not good enough.
I had set criteria, conditions for my meditation against which I could judge it while I was meditating.

Then... after my experience I shifted my perspective and simply sat down, in order to experience sitting down.

no matter what happened during the meditation it was perfect! because I was experiencing exactly what I set out to experience. I was experiencing sitting down, quietly.
if my mind wandered, then that is how my meditation was that time, that is what I was experiencing that time. it was not wrong, it was not bad, I had not failed... its was just that that is what sitting felt like at that moment in time.
removing the conditions allowed me to stop judging my meditation, if I only sat for 30 seconds then I only sat for 30 seconds. I just told myself that that is how mediation is done today, that is the experience of meditation today.
In letting go of any conditions I found that my mind was free-er, I could let go of stray thoughts if I wanted to because I knew I didn't have to in order to fit in with someone Else's rules. I gave myself freedom within meditation, freedom to choose my experience. freedom by letting go of what I was told about meditation, and in those mediations I found perfection... if you have no criteria against which to judge something then it becomes perfect,

The beauty of it is, I found that that can be applied to everything.. aikido, relationships, life in general.
if i do things and experience things simply for the experience of doing them, or experiencing them then I have no criteria against which they can be judged and I have freedom to choose within the experience. Harmony can be found within the experience because there are no expectations or judgments. just me and my awareness of the moment and my ability to choose.
I found it to be really quite beautiful

However, over the years I have found maintaining it and not getting distracted very difficult

  Reply With Quote