MEDITATION

NEW.

Hello, I’ve been away for a while, however, I’m back. Happy New Year!

It’s a New Year and a new decade. The last decade has been challenging, painful,  enlightening, exciting and rewarding and I’m sure this decade will be no exception.

You may say challenging and painful does not fit in with exciting and rewarding, you will notice enlightening is between the two.

Not every day are we blessed with sunshine, some days we have rain or storms, all are meant to balance out nature, and grow things.

We are a part of nature, albeit supposedly the more intelligent part. Most people look at sunshine positively and rain in a more negative stance.

In our day to day living we have positive and negative situations, like the weather, it is meant to balance us out and grow us up.

When a New Year begins, many people will make a New Year’s resolution, according to statistics, very few actually keep those resolutions beyond thirty days.

This is day two of February, most all resolutions are over, now lets go to MEDITATION.

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

The definition of meditation will vary with different people, with different understandings. What I will attempt to do, and it will be an attempt, which I will explain later why, is to give you what meditation means to me.

Webster’s Dictionary has two definitions. (a) a discourse intended to express its authors reflections or to guide others in contemplation. (b) the act or process of meditating.

To me, neither of those definitions are over enlightening. Matter of fact, it tends to create more questions than answers.

If I zero in on “meditating” the definition is “concentration on spiritual things as a form of private devotion.”

This opens up a whole new avenue to travel. I said at the beginning, I would attempt to explain what meditation means to me. This opens up “spiritual things” which, there is no problem with, except it is difficult to explain “spiritual.”

To me “spiritual” is indeed “private devotion” and if it is private, it has nothing to do with anyone other than myself.

This is where the word “attempt” comes in, if it has nothing to do with anyone other than myself, it is absolute. My mind is not able to accept absolute, it can only deal with relevant, it has to connect with someone or something.

My understanding of spiritual is “an energy force,” like the wind it is difficult to explain, but not difficult to experience. BUT, an experience is personal, exactly, herein lies “private devotion.”

If it has nothing to do with anyone other than myself, it is absolute. But I am a person, so how can it be absolute? My very being makes it relevant. That is why it becomes so difficult to understand because the understanding moves away from relevant and into the realm of absolute.

This brings me back to spiritual. Is there more to me than I think or more to me than meets the eye. Yes, we have two spirits, one relies on our senses, the mind, the other is our experiential side, the soul.

We could go into more dialogue on this subject, but rather than do that, I want to direct you to a previous post Natural and Supernatural

My intent in this post is to examine mediation as an exercise.

Mediation is the art or experience of communing with yourself, assuming we are willing to accept the fact that we are two dimensional beings.

 

COMMUNING WITH MYSELF.

Communing is sharing one’s intimate thoughts or feelings with (someone), especially on a spiritual level. (Dictionary)

We have already determined private had to do with ourselves and does not encapsulate another person, so communing is with myself. MY INNERSELF.

If we were sharing our thoughts or feelings with another person, we would communicate. Communing is totally different, if we were communicating with ourselves, we would be speaking out loud, or talking to ourselves. You know what others would think?

But this is not about others, this is about “You.” YOU is our powerhouse, where we can actually find an answer to our deepest questions, our fears, our doubts and can find a comfort in our deepest and darkest hour.

Most every person, in one way or another, has experienced a connection with “their REAL SELF” one time or another, but in most instances do not recognize it. The experience is immediately transferred to someone or something, this takes it out of the realm of absolute and puts it in the realm of relevant.

A VIRTUAL JOURNEY.

It is difficult to explain the reality of communing and meditation, it is so personal.

How this blog came about is the result of my own experiences, some of them go back over fifty years and in some ways make what is taking place today relevant, at the time that was not so. I was in the dark, to what was taking place, and no one told me anything different. It has been a long, and on times, lonely road.

I was a teenager when I met this girl I had attended school with. I knew her, but on this day I was smitten by her. I wanted to date her, a year later we began dating, three years later, we were married. Norma and I were married for forty-seven years.

A couple of years after Norma’s passing, I was introduced to a lady. I was suppose to meet up with her for lunch, but got cold feet. I called and apologized, that I could not make the lunch date. Our conversation went well, we talked every evening that week and on Saturday I took her to a dance. I had a long drive home, it was late, she invited me to stay the night, she had a spare bedroom, I stayed. The next morning she was going cross-country skiing and I was going home. She is making my breakfast and I’m making her lunch. This was only the second time we met each other. When I was leaving, I took her in my arms and said “I love You.” Sandra and I celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary this year.

My experience with those two very different ladies with over a fifty year time span was almost identical. It created, for me a question, without an answer. Communing with myself and posing that question, the answer came to me, the connection was with myself and those two ladies were my soulmates.

You have no doubt heard, “be careful who you give your heart to.“ THAT IS SO TRUE. If you give your heart to someone, you give away an important part of yourself. In this instance it is necessary to give your heart to yourself.

Before you discount what you will read next, think on the statement. “You give your heart to yourself.”

Your first thought maybe, that is selfish and self centered.

TRUE.

But if you have connected with your inner person your growth will be positive.

I found it was necessary to be honest with myself and take full responsibility for my actions past, present and if need be future.

I began to know myself, the side that got me in S–T more times than I can relate to and the other side of me, that allowed me to actually love myself, not arrogantly or egotistically.

MY MEDITATION.

When I realized that I was duo-dimensional and had a starting point my meditation was with my inner-self. My communing was with my real self not who people said I was or even who my parents said I was, or who I thought I was.

I began to find myself. I thought I knew myself, boy was I wrong.

I began to actually love myself and it made it so much easier to love others and especially my soulmates.

To love myself, I had to forgive myself and there was a lot to forgive.

My expectations of myself became less and less and hence my expectations of others grew less and less.

With less expectations there was less opportunities to get hurt by myself or others.

Did this happen overnight? No.

At first I struggled with the whole idea. I was entering into a realm I was not familiar with. In essence, looking back, I was moving from the realm of relevant to absolute.

When nothing is going your way, your disheartened, lonely and hurting and with no effort on your part what so ever, you find great peace, it’s not natural.

It’s the SUPERNATURAL side of us and we all have that side, that is who you are MEDITATING with.

Freud called it our SUPER EGO. In neurology it’s called NEURMODULATOR.

This has taken me a long time to come to this point where I can even attempt to articulate on my MEDITATING and the results.

The results is what counts.

I will leave you with this thought.

When we make a statement, we think it is real. Because we say something is a certain way, does not mean it is the way we say. It is so easy to deceive ourselves. In reality I am five feet ten inches tall, If I say I’m six feet two inches tall and believe I am, does that make me four inches taller. NO. Reality is my truth.

I was in the habit of looking at myself with dark glasses and others with a magnifying glass. It had to be reversed, I could not do that but meditating with my “YOU” and asking YOU to make the changes, gradually it began to change and is still changing.

Enjoy your meditating.

In my next post I will expand on my meditating and how it has been accomplished.