Meditation is not for wimps or people who don't want to feel

It occurs to me, since I've been talking about meditation a lot in recent posts and because I had a particularly emotional meditation today that I should perhaps dispel some myths about meditation that people may have who have not done it or that I may have contributed to by generally referring to the happier parts of the practice.

I have been meditating daily since 1995 or 1996 - it's a while back and honestly I can't remember what summer it was.  I started meditating because I was beginning each day in a state of anxiety that I would usually assault my then-husband with upon waking.  We were running a theater company together out of our apartment at the time, and everything I needed to do and thought had to happen Now would rush into my mind when I woke up and I would try to accomplish it all 5 minutes ago and of course he had to help immediately...

I woke up one day and realized, I am crazy now.  I have to stop this.  So I went to the sofa, sat down with a cup of coffee and perhaps a cigarette, and closed my eyes for 20 minutes.  I remembered some basics I had learned from various yoga teachers and other people who had told me about meditation, such as "just let the thoughts flow on by, you don't have to push them away or hold onto them", vague ideas about paying attention to breath and something a woman who helped me in my early days of letting go of drinking said "There's no such thing as a good or bad meditation."  With that information, I did what I could and remember a moment or two of calm.

Then, much to my surprise, I did the same thing the next day, and the next day and the day after that...and haven't stopped doing it since.  This still amazes me.

I have worked with breathing meditation, loving kindness meditation, my usual dumb-ass meditation (see above), listening meditation, walking meditation...etc.  Sometimes saying things in my head, sometimes silent, sometimes focusing on the space between my eyebrows, the so-called third eye, etc...

What started happening at some point, and I don't remember when precisely, is that emotions came up, really strong emotions.  I could spend most of a meditation crying or furious or whatever.  I haven't yet read the chapter in Salzberg's book about meditating with emotion and will be interested to see what she suggests.  However, I decided to do with the emotions what was suggested for the thoughts - let them be. Don't try to move them or push them away or - crucially - hold onto them.

So, today, I was doing another of the Salzberg variations (yes, I think I will - in honor of her meditation virtuosity begin referring to her instructions this way) - and it was a body scan.  Paying attention to each part of the body, starting with the top of the head and moving on down.

All was fine and groovy, until I got to my chest - started feeling a kind of buzzy unsettled feeling - the way it has felt a lot recently - like I've been punched and it's healing, sort of...then down further to the abdomen, which was OK but a little sad, then after the back to the pelvic region at which point I began sobbing...and sobbing...and sobbing.

This has to do with my separation from my husband, missing him in a very visceral way and also the sense I have that right now my sexuality is somewhere in deep freeze and my fear it will never come out again and also older historical things...but what I did was not worry about any of that and allowed the feeling.  This was not fun, this was not detached in the negative sense of the word, this was hard work and Very, very real..and healing...

But, to move on in the body scan, because I knew I couldn't stay there, I brought back in the five part witnessing process Stephen Cope suggests in Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (a book of sheer brilliance - read it if you are at all interested in healing old wounds for real and not just for show), which is: breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow.  I had already done the first three, but the crucial moment was 'watch' - it gave me crucial space between me - the witness - and the emotions, so I could both allow them and also allow myself to finish the body scan through my legs and on down to my feet.  I felt it was important not to get stuck.

I then got up and continued my day, which was gentled down to accommodate this emotional time.

So, in case you think meditation is just for people who want to get outside of themselves or for people who want to run away from reality or whatever, may I respectfully suggest that you are wrong.  Yes, there are some people who use it like a drug I suppose, but no one I know.

Meditation is practice for noticing and sitting through life, oneself and everything else.  This may seem like a small thing, but I'm relatively sure it's why I don't react to every little thing that happens in my life and why I'm still alive and somewhat sane.  And also why I haven't ever so far needed to resort to anti-depressants or the like (though I know for some folks, that's necessary, too - so not suggesting that meditation is a panacea, it's just my experience).

Meditation gives me access to the space between my reaction and my response.  It's in that space whatever God/dess is or isn't resides...or the Universe or whatever works for you...it's the space of choice, of inspiration, of something besides habitual reactivity.

I am grateful to now be taking this practice seriously again.  I have been practicing all along but was frankly getting lazy - letting it be 25 minutes of thinking about what to do when it was over.  This was better than nothing, but just.  By following Salzberg's directions and letting myself begin again with each breath, doing body scans and allowing mindfulness to come into every day activities, I'm bringing the real power of this practice back into my life.

An example of the exquisite nature of daily mindfulness - after the body scan I took a shower.  While showering, I realized I was doing what I usually do in the shower - thinking about a million other things.  So, I took a moment to breathe and begin again.  I then received the gift: I noticed for the first time ever the delicate arcs of spray coming off of my shoulder - tiny drops that arced in so many little dashes...like watery sparklers, reflecting off the black shower curtain.  A prosaic moment became a visual symphony.

Does this take away the pain?  Absolutely not.  Does it make it bearable and less likely I will act in self-destructive ways to prolong the pain and thereby cause suffering?  Absolutely.  And sometimes moments of beauty and joy the likes of which cannot be adequately described, and have nothing to do with anything other than being mindful in the moment.  As we say in certain meetings I go to "it's an inside job."  Indeed.