Meditation is really hard. When I’m not daydreaming, I’m narrating. But the moments when I snap back to the present moment are a good start. Furthermore, it seems as if I’m on my way to making this a habit. That represents progress, as well.
Meditation is really hard. When I’m not daydreaming, I’m narrating. But the moments when I snap back to the present moment are a good start. Furthermore, it seems as if I’m on my way to making this a habit. That represents progress, as well.
Oh yes. I remember it took me a couple of years from the time I seriously started practicing meditation, to get to where I could vanish into the void… when ‘seeking’ stopped. When Self simply evaporated, like a passing cloud. (Putting that into words seems so weak, isn’t it?)
What techniques, if any, do you use? There are many. Find the one that feels right to you, and practice it to perfection.
The one that finally worked for me was the “imaging the lotus flame” technique. I can’t recall how I found out or where I read about it (and am too lazy at the moment to Google it ::chuckle::). I didn’t even know what a lotus was, so I just used my image of any old flame.
It was red around the edges, lightening inward to a white hot center. Anyway, the suggestion was to imagine it clearly… in your throat. At first, I found that entirely impossible. Eyes closed and breathing in the prescribed manner, I would see the flame in a bowl, or a lily pad, or cupped in my hands, or on a candle… but always in front of me. Getting it to lodge in my throat, so to speak, seemed like an impossibility, even in imagination.
So, at first the meditative state was an exercise in visual processing — still a very mindful state (which was contra the mindlessness that is one’s goal). Ergo, I remained ‘involved’ in the process of meditating. Anyway, some weeks or a couple of months later of using this technique, lo and behold… the flame’s ‘containers’ vanished. My hands, the lily pad, the candle, the bowl… I no longer needed them. I could finally ‘see’ the flame in my throat (though seeing seems like the entirely wrong way to describe that—’feel’ doesn’t do it, either).
In a very real way, what happened was simple: I became the flame. Self fell away, during meditation, to reveal the thing that people refer to as ‘soul,’ or what I prefer to call immanence.
But wait. It got better! After still more time practicing this technique, the flame moved down to where my bellybutton would be. That these points mapped to the chakras of Hindu spiritual practice (which was not part of my own practice or belief system) felt… right.
Anyway, this technique might work for you… or it might not. But the point is this: find what does, and flow with it.
(Another technique that seemed to have great potential for me was chanting; I once went to a Korean Zen meditation center in Berkeley where these monks would chant stuff from an ancient holy Buddhist scrolls — and it was so ancient that the modern practitioners of this tradition no longer knew the meanings to the syllables. That’s what they were — syllables intoned over and over again, apparently yielding blessed nothingness through the chanting of them. I tried it, and failed dismally — I was always so engrossed in the sound of these ancient words, too wrapped up in my fascination of them that I didn’t simply just disappear into them.)
p.s.:
“…too wrapped up in my fascination of them that I didn’t simply just disappear into them” — unlike those monks! It was really eerie to see and hear them chanting (the sound was low, guttural, droning) and yet have the sensation that they were somehow not there. That they were ghosts. (And yes, my observing of them in that state contributed to my inability to myself disappear. haha.) I loved going there, though, to watch and listen to these venerable creatures — it was the Empty Gate Zen Center on Arch Street, right near Tolman Hall. It’s no longer there, alas.
The way I’ve always done it is to just focus on my breathing. That has worked for me in the past, when I sometimes had to do it in high school. I am sitting differently, so maybe I’ll switch that back to the way I used to do it.
I’ve never tried anything else. I’ll approach some other techniques with an open mind.
It’s also encouraging that the time-frame is months and years. I don’t feel discouraged that progress is slow.