Demystifying Meditation
The process of meditation is nothing more than quietly going within. When you close your eyes to the external world with all its distractions and stimuli you can connect more easily with your inner world and your whole self – not just your distracted personality self. You connect with your higher mind which is also the greater universal mind we all share.
Meditation can simply be moments of reflection – when walking along the beach, or sitting in front of an open fire or even when you’re driving or taking a shower.
When I first came to meditation over 20 years ago I had some funny experiences. I used to try very hard to access this perceived illusive state of meditation. I was attending lots of courses at the time including meditation classes. Often the facilitator would guide the group through a meditation after which the other students would report having had remarkable mystical experiences where I had none. I felt like an absolute fraud, but loved the learning curve I was on and kept my little secret to myself.
At the time, I was having a lot of dental work done as I’d decided to replace all of my mercury/amalgam fillings with something healthier. At my first appointment my dentist went about fitting a rubber dam in my mouth, hooking it around my teeth to catch the dislodged mercury so it didn’t flood my system. The problem was that the harder he tried to secure it, the more I disrupted the procedure when it activated my gag response and he’d have to start again. He and his assistant tried for twenty minutes before giving up in frustration, saying they had to proceed with out it. Well, that threw me into mild panic, and I immediately held up my hand and declared – “Please try one more time, I’m sure I will be fine.”
Deciding that mind over matter was the only way forward I began to think about the colours of the chakras that were discussed in meditation class. I imagined the ladder of these energy centres in my body and their corresponding colours. I would give the red of the base chakra my whole, unwavering attention and then flash the colour through my whole body, and then move up the ladder to the next colour. It was an exercise to simply divert my attention away from the frenzied activity and all the instruments in my mouth.
I didn’t think anything extraordinary was happening but the next hour and a half sped by, seeming like no time at all, and I realised it was all over. The odd thing was that I didn’t want to come out of that blissful state. I had sat motionless, without the hint of a twitch, almost breathless for about 90 minutes. The dentist was astonished and so was I. It was a moment of realisation when I knew I had moved myself into a true meditative state.
My altered state didn’t come about in a meditation class, or while sitting cross legged in an ashram in India, but in my dentist’s surgery on the 33rd floor of a glass tower in Hong Kong. I’d moved from a state of high anxiety to a deeply still state, but the thing to note here is – I didn’t realise I’d shifted states to that degree until I came out of it. While I was in it, it seemed subtle. I’d lost track of time, of being conscious of where I was and of my circumstances.
I looked forward to my next visit to see if it would work again, and it did every time. Having accessed that state, and observed the signature of it, it was easier to identify again.
Prior to this experience I would have expected a state of meditation to have overwhelmed me – that I’d have felt as if I’d been totally transported to some transcended state.
I remember the author and speaker Carolyn Myss talking about the great cosmic paradox – that the small things are often the big things and visa versa. Our states of connectedness, when we are truly aligned with spirit and ‘all that is’, can be subtle but powerful. I also like the words from the Sufi tradition that speak of the subtlety of wisdom – that it remains hidden from obvious view. It sings in the soft breeze that rustles through the branches of the trees. You have to stop, still yourself and listen carefully because its small voice can be drowned out by the noise of the world.
So, drop any expectations and know that you can discover moments of meditation and insight as easily as you might step into a warm puddle of water while walking on the beach.
There is an ever present, calm and cohesive energy field that sits within us and around us. It is the fabric of our true nature, our real home. It waits for us to hear its gentle call so that it might wrap itself around us again and again.
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