CONFESSIONS OF A NEW MEDITATOR

When we're doing the work of learning, it's better to listen more and to speak less. This is how I justify my long absence here (to myself, at any rate). In late February or early March of this year, I began studying the Self Realization Fellowship's mediation lessons, along with some other works of my guru Paramahansa Yogananda, and pretty quickly I came to believe both that I wasn't nearly as decent a person as I hope to be and that I really need to do better. Who am I to tell you anything, anyways? I guess I've always supposed and at times suggested along these lines, only suddenly I felt it more keenly. I guess feeling like a terrible human being is fairly well to be expected when one spends much time reflecting on the work of proper avatars.

Since late winter, then, I have meditated twice a day, morning and evening, without fail. All but a few sessions have been at least thirty minutes, and some sessions have exceeded an hour.

For a time I thought I experienced no effects whatsoever. I mean, unless I included the fact that I felt more confused about how to live and be, possibly a consequence of searching externally in trying to figure out how to align myself with dharma, rather than within. I don't know, as I'm still in process. (I recall something along the lines of “The work is never done, but neither are we free to stop doing it.”)

I might be a little more peaceful, which is to say less quick to emotional reactions. I'm capable of being disappointed without becoming angry or despondent. Of course, there may be other factors involved. Besides unfollowing, unfriending, and straight-out avoiding haters (in an effort at “non-cooperation with evil”), I've also just accepted the fact that at any moment some new injustice can come to my attention, and that none of my anger or distress ever resolved anything. Only action does that, and my actions are better performed from the point of calm, anyhow.

Maybe it's the meditation initiating the calm, or maybe its the removal of triggers, or maybe it's the gamma-aminobutyric acid: I missed a couple of weeks worth of that supplement, you see, and experienced just a few bouts of the unreasonable and self-destructive rage I'm doing everything I can to banish permanently from my life. Exercise, meditation, supplementation, and the endeavor to create new, functional, productive and sustainable patterns in my life have all been towards the goal of Self-Realization, and figuring out exactly what that means for me. (So far, I'm only clear on that it means totally eliminating patterns of self-harm, and offering my power in the service of love. Vague, but a start).

The self is both a thing created and which we are creating. In the muck of matter, change is slow. Will, belief, and attunement are the forces by which we manifest anything; and the greater these, the greater the results. I meditate in order to attune my thinking with my best Self: my Soul, Spirit within. I get a sense of conflict – cognitive dissonance, maybe – in an effort to develop non-attachment and simultaneously shine. I write it, and suddenly it seems much easier than I make of it: just do my best, and nevermind the results, (save in their capacity to redefine "do my best.") Burn off the dross, what remains is the thing.

Then, there's the being the thing. I try to avoid mental attachment to the impermanent self, and yet I have to mind me enough to see where the mud of ego blocks the expression of soul. Even thinking about it is too much, too heavy, sometimes. The thoughts become the mud itself; and of course they are, where the only way to know soul is by intuition. It isn't supposed to make sense. It is, and is all.

So you see now that all this study and meditation has me in something of a mist. But through it I can see the white ball of sun, and by it I direct me. The light I see and the warmth I sense, too. And however tenuous, I let that be enough.

Recently I recognized that suddenly, after a few years of intense social anxiety, I'm showing up at the DZ again, and even started going to Sunday services at temple to meditate with an entirely new crowd of people. I like to make and share healthy, nutritious food with everyone again, to hang around and talk some, and I don't so urgently or even often at all feel the need to escape. If I start to feel overwhelmed it doesn't spiral or expand so rapidly, but I manage more regularly to withdraw myself into an inner peace that feels much easier to access now, and which I most certainly need. I'm more quiet and observant, I believe; and when I have caught myself talking much, or even wanting to talk more than listen, I feel like an ass and shut the fuck up. I reflect a little more deeply before I speak, though in truth I think still not nearly enough.

“Not nearly enough” is the gist of what meditation has made me realize that I am. It sounds terrible, but truly this fact has driven in me a deeper commitment to and stronger efforts at self-improvement. And I may be a little disappointed that I'm more awful than I thought I was, but I'm not despondent about that, either. It just means it's time to act. While this newest journey is still incipient and I don't even know where it's taking me, I get that feeling that I don't need to know, and that more and more my Self will just attune and act as needed to fully fill whatever and wherever it is I've been lacking.

Continued practice and patience for a lot of peace in the making of me? Yeah, I can dig it.

Onward, my friends, with love and light. Peace be to you, too.