Resuming two hour meditation a day
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I started meditating two hours a day again with the method I learned during my 10 day vipassana. I did not actually meditate in that chair but seated on the floor cross legged but often also meditate just on a chair. I try to get in the same state whenever I can, talking to someone and being present is also a meditation for example. Observing everything. Observing the person talking to you deeply or being present to every word. Observing any thought that arises or something you want to say and letting it go and not saying it or not thinking about anything else than the conversation. It’s a muscle to exercise. The muscle of not being my thoughts and being “above my thoughts”, worries or new to do list I am thinking of. Changes in myself are very small and take time to see but there is change. Two hours a day is huge, if I sleep 8 hours and have meals or socialize for say 5 hours there is only 11 hours left in a day for doing. Work or spiritual work as doing. For example I have played guitar about an hour a day for more than three months. That’s doing, it’s not work as defined by society but it’s work on myself and I’m grateful I can do that. So taking 2 hours out of 11 hours I could be doing something is a very significant investment but I feel it’s really worth it. My dream work and reading “Dream Yoga” showed me that meditation while I am awake is very important. My morning meditation hour has been very different than my afternoon one. I am still with my dreams, I could recall two of them this morning. I can feel my brain is still in the dreaming frequency has I started dreaming during meditation and had trouble coming back to just observing my thoughts an sensation pas in the “equanimous” way that SN Goenka teaches. It was really easy to keep the posture and my back straight as my body was relaxed. In the evening I am much more struggling with my physical position and staying straight with many more physical sensations. I am much more in the dream state in the morning and much more in the physical and my body in the evening. I am looking forward to observing long term what two hours of meditation will do. Do you meditate?
Resuming two hour meditation a day
This is what I needed to read today, to be motivated for this week, and hopefully longer. Merci!
"It’s a muscle to exercise." Yes. We all have muscles-- just like someone who becomes a ballet dancer. But why is it we cannot dance like them? Because we did not practice, daily, for decades. In that same way, watching breath, over decades, returning to the breath in every moment of life, while speaking, walking, talking-- particularly when we say " You made me so angry" to some one we also say we love.... that is the practice. Breath practice, mindfulness, that is the tool that allows humans to 'turn the other cheek"-- not faith. After decades of practice one teacher taught me that while sitting alone, apart from others for hours is good, at the start, that eventually that practice must become one second, in the middle of life. Breath meditation is the practice. Very important. The work--the fruit of practice-- flowers in the middle of life. After years of practice. When we see the hand, seized by anger.... and the hand stops in mid flight before it hits the one we say we love.
Most of us do not watch ballet dancers practice.