Meditation is a powerful tool. It is so simple, yet so hard. It's just sitting quietly with a straight back. I struggled with meditation for a long time and in some ways still do. I found myself irritated afterward at times. I would put it off. I didn't know what the goal was. It created a tension in me. The tension broke only when I began to really see where this was all coming from.
The struggle was in my mind. What meditation has shown me is everything passes. Everything is temporary. Thoughts and emotions come and they go. The breath comes in and goes out. We live and we die. I became the witness. The observer. Aware.
With this awareness I became responsible for the thoughts and emotions I pursued. My pursuit of these thoughts and emotions create my reality. And that is where I am at right now. Acceptance and responsibility for what I create in my mind.
Currently I am practicing Zazen meditation. I use a zafu and zabuton and sit in the seiza position most often. Meditation continues to evolve for me. I now create a ceremony. I light candles and burn incense. It has truly become a practice. An ever evolving practice.
Please share anything related to meditation on this thread. I very much look forward to any contributions from this community.
Namaste!
Hi. I’ve been practicing for about 11 years. I got sober 11 years ago after 35 years of early onset, chronic, late stage alcoholism. I used all drugs alcoholically too (not psychedelics tho)
At 6 months sober using 12 step process for awakening there was a burning bush “spiritual” experience.
I use spiritual lightly because the truth is, I don’t know what that is but that’s what many of us call it and it’s typically relatable.
I began practicing meditation either before that or around the time of my entrance into recovery, however I’d done sweat lodges, a couple vision quests and engaged in other spiritual pursuits on and off for years prior.
I was trying to cure my alcoholism and was headed in the right direction but hadn’t yet found the path that was gonna do it. Which for me, and many others is 12 step process.
Anyway, on meditation.
That’s great you’ve recognized yourself as the awareness.
I’m truth, there is no “you” that’s recognized anything. Awareness wakes up to itself. The sense of the “you” that’s recognized it is still ego but ego is also THAT.
There is no me doing anything.
The mind is not mine, me or my. The mind is a program operating created by conditioning and experiences.
What are you doing to think next?
No clue right? It’s just happening.
Thinking and thoughts are an activity of the mind much like breathing is an activity of the lungs.
There is no me digesting food, beating the heart or breathing.
Digestion is just happening.
Heart is beating and I am being breathed.
Same is true for thinking. We are being thought.
Sometimes we are thinking, other times we are the thought about.
At all times we are the awareness of whatever is appearing to happen.
I remember many times coming out of a sit (meditation) in a much worse mental and emotional state.
Lots of possible reasons for that. Some of which I was aware of as an afterthought.
1 example is I can face to face in meditation with areas of life I was resisting. Areas I was being dishonest and or things I was avoiding.
This happened both consciously and sometimes unconsciously.
Sometimes I saw why, other times I was clueless as to why I was suddenly full of a depressive state or anxiety had come to fill the void.
I’ve done a fair amount of trauma and inner child work in meditations too. Sometimes it was aspects of one or both of those that had appeared in meditation to be felt, seen or acknowledged. Either or both of those can produce unpleasant experience states too, for sure!
Especially if there was resistance.
Candles and incense are a nice touch, but, these can be a trap of sorts too.
The mind will say “we can’t meditate without candles and incense” or without my meditation bench or cushion.
The mind will create all kinds of rules and regulations for practice making practice unavailable until those various rules are in order.
That was a funny one to catch occurring.
“I can’t meditate if I don’t have the right music, or candles or incense or or or or.”
Hilarious right?
Meditation eventually becomes just the state we are constantly in.
Formal practice leads to getting off the cushion and taking practice to the kitchen to wash the dishes, to the bathroom while using the toilet, while showering, at work, while driving etc.
As this naturally begins to happen awareness continues to open up further (seemingly anyway) and we start to reside in and as awareness.
IT (awareness) wakes up to itself.
The sense of the separate individual self may or may not continue, but you will see it rather than be it.
There won’t be any identification with it anymore. It’ll just be something else that’s happening in you, the awareness.
Hopefully that helps a bit. You’re in for the ride of your life so hang on.
Peace
