a thought on meditation

 

Meditation in school

My first real attempts at meditation took place several years ago at the School of Metaphysics in Indianapolis.  The School was actually a house converted to function as a classroom, meeting room, and sanctuary. It worked. It “felt” different as soon as you stepped inside and shut to door on the shopping, eating, and consuming happening in malls, shops and restaurants outside it’s front door.

In that large front room, on a chair, or a mat, I took part in my first guided meditations.

I think most of us are familiar with the benefits of meditating as it is gaining some traction in popular media and culture. But, here I am talking about the self-revealing benefits one receives within and from their own meditation practice. As with a yoga practice, it is different each and every time. Like yoga, meditation escapes definition and labels. The reward is nothing you can pull into your driveway and show your neighbor.

Meditation at home

A couple days ago, I came across the handbook that I had used for those meditation classes. I had to shake the dust off it before I took it off my shelf. I looked at the cover, a little surprised I still had the thing.  But I must have kept it for a reason. So, I brought the little book downstairs with the intent to review it. It sat for several weeks. Yesterday I opened it and began to look it over.  I knew from the way the book had found me that there was something in it that I needed to read. I had no idea what it was, until I knew.

Meditation as thinking

The line that struck me was ‘Consider that wherever you are in your thinking is your meditation“. At first, it would seem that would shoot holes in the years of building and maintaining my meditation practice. Why bother? As long as I am thinking, I’m meditating, right? What a relief. I’m free to live my life, reacting, careening from on distraction to the next, one fear to the next, letting the raspy-voiced Allstate guy sort through my untended mind for his next payday.

Thankfully not. A meditation is defined as a highly attuned state of awareness. How long is that? Hour at the most? The real intent of the quote above was that it reminded me that meditation’s short time span, that state of awareness, can’t last. But it can be emotionally felt and mindfully experienced. Therefore, the time we spend meditation’s real value is that it can call attention to our thoughts the rest of the day.

 

If I get irritated at getting beat to the best parking spot at Kroger on Saturday morning when I really need to be close because it’s my big haul and I don’t want to do this anyway because things are too expensive these days and it’s raining, and I forgot my coupons, then that is where I am in my thinking.

Meditation anytime, anywhere

Then, my meditation is not one of a highly attuned state of awareness, it is a mediation of getting beat to the best parking spot at Kroger on Saturday morning when I really need to be close because it’s my big haul and I don’t want to do this anyway because things are too expertise these days and it’s raining, and I forgot my coupons. 

I can’t bring my meditation cushion to Kroger on Saturday mornings.

But, it feels rather good to be reminded that meditating is not always limited to a few minutes on a cushion. And that noticing my thoughts isn’t something limited to a specific time or location.

That in mind, I will read quote that found me this Saturday before I head out to Kroger, with or without coupons, rain or shine. I have a suspicion that when I get there every parking space will look about the same.