Meditation for me has been different on certain days.
Some days If I sit in meditation after work hours then it could be more work related thoughts. Not to mention , work related insights may be received. I may get a better solution to a small problem. It has happened so one time, which I remember vividly. A thought suddenly stood out , out of all the zipping thoughts. And it helped me resolve a problem more creatively. On certain days I am with my breath immediately, those are the days of deep, peaceful meditation. Less thoughts and 'qualitative' meditation. Less thoughts , more breath for longer time. I want to iterate here that there is no such as a "good" or "bad" meditation. Whatever is, just "is". But yes, I am curious too, to know of what happens when we are completely thoughtless. If it's even possible to do so while we are in a "physical life". On some days, my body has ached and all the dormant body pains have suddenly become "active". Since while sitting in meditation - there is nothing in between the body and my mind and the focus is now purely on the body or breath and at that time those things that were not "visible" earlier, which in this case probably an overworked body, has suddenly come in focus. This in turn has also helped me become more mindful of my body and eventually I have stopped before crossing the line and overworking my body during waking hours. e.g. typing on computer or talking too fast. At times, my body is very restless. In such cases, it takes time to calm myself down, before I can even observe my own breath. In such cases what I have learnt over a period of time and done is, let whatever Is happening "just be" rather than fighting it. Also at times I have tried to just relax each body part. On certain times, I especially remember this happening during the early days of meditation, when I could not "find' my breath. At such time I read somewhere that we can observe the moving stomach. This worked for me when I was fighting to find my breath and keep focus, by observing the stomach area I was easily able to release the tension sooner. Once the body relaxes, it is much easier to be with the breath. Also one thing that hits first when the body is relaxed is "falling asleep" during meditation. Which has eventually lead to feeling fresh with calmer thoughts. Sleeping during meditation is not bad . Not that it is "the ultimate" thing because the longer you can be in an awake state during meditation (albeit not fighting when sleep comes in) that would be good. I have found that I have been able to sit for maximum 1.5 hours when I am at home, before I start getting restless or remember to do pending chores or get bored (the mind playing tricks). One time when I was in Bangalore Pyramid Valley for a 4 day long meditation where I planned to meditate longer hours, I was able to sit for 2 hours at a stretch and it came so easily. I had no feeling of boredom. I had no pressing matters to attend to and such thoughts didn’t bother me or make me restless. I vividly remember while I was meditating once in the pyramid , suddenly one thought popped in my mind - Upasani Maharaj. This was quite odd. Because I had never heard this name before in my life. I cannot recollect , for the life of me, if I had read about this Indian saint before and If I really did read about him or heard of him I was unable to recollect that then or even now. I had to google search him after meditation to know who he even was. I mean it could be that I had read of him while surfing the internet earlier in my life and forgotten about it, for it to suddenly come up during meditation. More and more we calm our mind, a lot of forgotten things are remembered during meditation. Memory really improves due to meditation, it's true. Someone suggested to me when I narrated this incident later , that it could have been that this saint was around me during that time his name popped up in my mind during meditation. obviously in the astral dimension. But then who knows. At times when I meditate using Indian classical instrumental music, I have used music to calm myself down. During meditation if my mind wanders a lot i.e. there are too many thoughts, I listen and enjoy the music instead of thinking, this helps me relax and focus on my breath sooner. Also when I am not observing the breath I enjoy the music which anyway is soothing. This way I use music to help me go deeper in meditation. |
AuthorThis is a blog about my thoughts, my journey in life, insights I have had, help that I have received spiritually or otherwise, pretty much anything... Archives
November 2021
|