Meditation, Maya, and Me

So, let's start this post off with a few things we've all probably heard about meditation...just so we're all on the same page. According to modern science and the medical world, meditation is incredibly beneficial, having more positive effects on our bodies than can possibly be mentioned. Various forms of meditation have also been practiced by spiritually advanced eastern civilizations for thousands of years.

So what's the big deal? Here are a few of the physiological benefits claimed by practitioners and various clinical studies. Meditation has been know to calm the mind, reduce stress, improve concentration, reduce muscle tension, enhance the immune system, decrease the rate in which the body ages, improve athletic performance, help with weight loss, and provide significant relief from asthma just to name a few. Those are just physical benefits! Here's are some psychological benefits. Mediation is said to build self-confidence, resolve issues surrounding fear, help with concentration, increase creativity, improve memory, develop intuition, develop willpower, improve social skills, reduce road rage, decrease restless behavior, improve tolerance, decrease tendency to worry, and on and on and on...What about these yogis and monks and swamis? What are they out to gain through meditation? Here are some incentives...peace of mind, happiness, perspective on one's life, increased compassion, harmony, cultivates a sense of "oneness", helps to learn forgiveness for self and others, deepens the capacity for love, discovery of a self beyond the ego, and the big one...enlightenment!

So with a list like that, why wouldn't everyone practice meditation? Who knows. I can speculate that most peoples reasons are a lot like the one's I've had experience with. I always thought meditation seemed so rigid and stiff. With lots of rules and codes of conduct. I've also never really been such a big fan of commitment and the commitment to meditate always seemed like such a big one. I've pretty much always been an instant gratification kinda guy. Mediation promised all of these magical benefits but they always seemed so far down the pike. Sitting completely still for hours on end? Um...thanks, but no thanks. And here's the big reason...I never really thought things were that bad. Of course some nights I couldn't go to sleep because just being alive seemed overwhelming. And... then sometimes I would get completely wasted just to get out of my head for a while. Hmmm.... it's like there was always this mild anxiety that was with me everywhere I went. I felt like at any minute the sky might start falling. It seemed as though I was missing some really important piece of life and no matter where I looked, I just couldn't find it. Do you hear what I'm saying?

So anyway, I went to Yogaville for this teacher's training class that I mentioned before. Part of the curriculum was to meditate at least twice a day. Once at 6 am and once at noon. Let me tell you all about it. I tend to be a person who's pretty gung-ho about lots of stuff...until it starts, that is. I guess you could say I'm sometimes excited about the theory of what's about to happen and not so much the practical application. That's why I feel that meditation by force is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I got up all bright-eyed at 5:30 am the first morning of class, took a shower, and proceeded to walk to the academy (I was living in a tent in the woods) for morning meditation. Oh boy! Well, we sit down, Ohm a little bit, and then we start. Hooray, I'm meditating!!! I felt this exhilaration for all of about 5 minutes. That's right about when things started to suck. I was getting super antsy and these surges of energy kept flowing through my body like crazy juice. My breath was becoming labored and I felt like I was going to start screaming "Fuck" at the top of my lungs and maybe start running around the room smashing windows with my fists. Then the real fun began! My back started to hurt sooo bad. When I got to finally open my eyes 400 years later I was pissed. Needless to say I wasn't really looking forward to the noon meditation or the 35 hours I would be sitting in meditation that month. Great.

Well, it got better. The first few days sucked, don't get me wrong. But then some cool stuff started to happen. For starters, the intrinsic muscles that run along my spine started to strengthen, so my back stopped hurting. I got my breath under wraps and it soon became my favorite focal point. Then I started having some strange experiences. I started remembering all of these bits and pieces of memories that I hadn't thought about for years. Nothing super earth shattering, but still, interesting that this stuff was just floating around in my subconscious mind. Then the dreams started. Horrible nightmares actually. Like being murdered or chased or horribly humiliated. Gee whiz! All of this stuff was having an effect on my psyche and I wasn't even aware of it. Apparently nightmares can be common occurrence when someone starts meditating regularly. The idea is that I was releasing these fears and dealing with emotions in my dreams, and that was cleaning up my mind. I was seriously starting to feel a difference in just the first couple of weeks. Like this feeling of "ahhhhh". It was like I was truly beginning to relax. Here's the real kicker...one morning (probably around the beginning of the third week) during my meditation I had this very personal vision of Lord Shiva. Immediately I felt this lump grow in my throat and this overwhelming sense of beauty and compassion throughout my being. As I sat there, bathed in this ocean of feeling, tears began to stream down my face. It felt like I was finally able to take off this huge backpack I had been lugging around. Needless to say the rest of my day was awesome. It's like I was seeing through brand new eyes. I'm sorry if the metaphors are a little lame. It's hard to fit these feelings into these tiny little words. Anyway, I felt more emotion in those few weeks than I had for the past few years.

Within a few weeks of coming home my entire practice had all but withered away and died. I though about it all the time but it was like I just couldn't get going. That wasn't really working out so well. It was creating massive amounts of anxiety, like I was letting all of this wonder that I had just experienced slip away. Here's a little bit of advice. When your soul is crying out for something...LISTEN and make it happen. If you don't your heart will break. So I've started practicing again. I didn't really have any choice. I made it happen.

My practice is easy. I try to sit twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. If I miss one here or there I don't freak out but I do try and sit at least once a day. I think it's easier to meditate in the evening. There's all kinds of energetic explanations for this but basically I'm more relaxed and find it easier to sit and concentrate. That's how meditation begins, by the way, concentration. The definition of meditation has been misconstrued by some new age ways of thinking. Guided journeys, pretty music, and flowery words, are not meditation techniques. These are called visualizations. Useful, but not meditation. How can we find stillness when we're introducing a whole new set of associations into the consciousness? Again, the idea is to concentrate on a single point. That's how we clear our minds and through this we find stillness. In that stillness lies our true identity. You see, as soon as we're born into our bodies we receive a name, a birthday, parents, and all kinds of associations. From the second we take our first breath we immediately start having relationships with the outside world. Through these relationships our ego selves set an identity. And through this growing identity we begin to form attachments. Through these attachments we learn fear and separation. Meditation brings us back to our center and reminds us at the core of our being that these associations are simply that, associations...not who we authentically are. We play these games of association, of right and wrong, of attachment because this is how the ego operates. The ego is a necessary tool because of the world we live in. A world of duality where everything has an opposite. Because of this polarity it is necessary to make choices. In the Hindu tradition this world is known as the world of Maya. Maya is the goddess of illusion. It is her magic to create a division and that division is where we make our home while in these physical bodies. Maya is the creator of the illusion of the individual self. The mother of the ego. Ego is illusion. When we can quiet the mind of all of it's chatter about association we can find our identity in the stillness that remains.

To learn a little more about this concept follow this link yogas chitta vritti nirodha

Here is an artist's rendition of Maya dancing her dance of illusion. Pretty...BUT NOT REAL!!! ha ha ha...





O.K.? So anyway, where was I? As you can see meditation is pretty much essential to spiritual growth and enlightenment. If we are under illusion about who we are then we're not really getting anywhere. So....back to my meditation practice. Here's the skinny. I'm doing the best I can. As I was saying, I shoot for twice a day. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes I concentrate on my breath, sometimes I concentrate on my third eye. Sometimes I repeat a mantra (I haven't found one that really calls out to me yet) and sometimes all I can handle is just sitting there trying to keep my eyes closed. Sometimes I scream. Sometimes I wake up at 10 am and I meditate at 11:30. That's awesome as far as I'm concerned. There's a whole universe going on inside of my head and as long as I'm making the effort I feel good about that. The thoughts don't really stop yet. I don't let this upset me. I just try not to let them run away with my consciousness. I gently come back to my focal point and I carry on. This is my meditation practice. Easeful, peaceful, and useful as a great teacher once said things should be. Sometimes it's amazing and sometimes not so much. But it's progressing and that's awesome.

Om Tat Sat.