I have had a daily meditation practice for the last 5 straight years with very few days skipped. I would meditate for one hour or more every morning. The effect has been transforming from the very beginning, to say the very least. Cumulatively, I'm not the same person today with a profound change in my perspectives and insights, temperament and disposition, creativity and relationships, and so forth. Yet since the death of my father back in April, I've found myself far less frequently doing my daily ritual of meditation practice, sitting on the cushion and entering into these prolonged and deep meditative states.
The interesting thing about this is one might expect progress in one's life being stalled, or potentially falling back into less even control and clarity and old mind habits. But instead it seems more like what's been done in all that work is continuing to deepen. It's like putting something in the oven which continues to bake in the dish after you've pulled it out. It seems it's not just a matter of the interior work done on the mat where gains are made. Rather it seems all of that continues to grow and move through me, continuing the work despite not sitting in the seat in the classroom as a student. In fact, one could argue that this "break" is necessary in order to let it settle and ground, to deepen and enrich the person's being in themselves and in the world as it continues to transform them as they do the daily work of living with this new inner knowledge. I suppose this defines integration.
I say "break" in meditation with quotes, because in reality it's not that what has been opened to has been set aside. It's just the daily exercise routine down at the gym, so to speak. The techniques of how to look at life, how to use the mind more effectively, how to take all those "normal" things in us such as our fears, anxieties, egoic self-seeking, and so forth and process them quite differently than from when we first began. One could say it is all still meditation, just less going directly into the classroom as a student in college. It's a different sort of schooling, like a field trip you might say where you don't having your pen and paper in hand taking notes, but simply observing, processing, and integrating what you encounter as you walk through the world.
On those days now when I do a sitting meditation as before, it's no struggle at all to "get back" to where I was. In fact, it's brilliant the second I hit the mat. Overwhelmingly so in fact. Quite free and liberated, like coming Home to the familiar faces of one's family. And you are a different, wiser, more mature person today whom they happily greet at the door adding to their own joy.
I think in no small way, the reality of my life at this time of major life change in my family, the dying of my father whom I was able to be with at his side as he passed, being with and supporting my mother in this change of life as a widow, the grief of family and that of my own, is in itself part of the whole in what takes these deeper inner insights and applies them to integrating our own past and present being into who we are becoming. All of this time is a place of transforming the past which is of course part of all of what makes me who I am, but with that true Light which I've moved into through these past 5 years of work.
And so I wonder if others find that sometimes you have to take a "break" and let things simmer and blend the stew together in your life, and that that actually is the work that needs to be done? Obviously work is continuing, but not with the routine or exact tools. It just seems curiously strange in a way to me, perhaps because the daily ritual has been so much a part of me it feels like I "should" be but am not. I know that part of my life and practices is not over, but simply undergoing a change I didn't expect exactly. Thoughts?
The interesting thing about this is one might expect progress in one's life being stalled, or potentially falling back into less even control and clarity and old mind habits. But instead it seems more like what's been done in all that work is continuing to deepen. It's like putting something in the oven which continues to bake in the dish after you've pulled it out. It seems it's not just a matter of the interior work done on the mat where gains are made. Rather it seems all of that continues to grow and move through me, continuing the work despite not sitting in the seat in the classroom as a student. In fact, one could argue that this "break" is necessary in order to let it settle and ground, to deepen and enrich the person's being in themselves and in the world as it continues to transform them as they do the daily work of living with this new inner knowledge. I suppose this defines integration.
I say "break" in meditation with quotes, because in reality it's not that what has been opened to has been set aside. It's just the daily exercise routine down at the gym, so to speak. The techniques of how to look at life, how to use the mind more effectively, how to take all those "normal" things in us such as our fears, anxieties, egoic self-seeking, and so forth and process them quite differently than from when we first began. One could say it is all still meditation, just less going directly into the classroom as a student in college. It's a different sort of schooling, like a field trip you might say where you don't having your pen and paper in hand taking notes, but simply observing, processing, and integrating what you encounter as you walk through the world.
On those days now when I do a sitting meditation as before, it's no struggle at all to "get back" to where I was. In fact, it's brilliant the second I hit the mat. Overwhelmingly so in fact. Quite free and liberated, like coming Home to the familiar faces of one's family. And you are a different, wiser, more mature person today whom they happily greet at the door adding to their own joy.
I think in no small way, the reality of my life at this time of major life change in my family, the dying of my father whom I was able to be with at his side as he passed, being with and supporting my mother in this change of life as a widow, the grief of family and that of my own, is in itself part of the whole in what takes these deeper inner insights and applies them to integrating our own past and present being into who we are becoming. All of this time is a place of transforming the past which is of course part of all of what makes me who I am, but with that true Light which I've moved into through these past 5 years of work.
And so I wonder if others find that sometimes you have to take a "break" and let things simmer and blend the stew together in your life, and that that actually is the work that needs to be done? Obviously work is continuing, but not with the routine or exact tools. It just seems curiously strange in a way to me, perhaps because the daily ritual has been so much a part of me it feels like I "should" be but am not. I know that part of my life and practices is not over, but simply undergoing a change I didn't expect exactly. Thoughts?
