Ugh. Didn't sit last night. Didn't even try, much. Discouraged. Both work and life seem to be asking more of me than I have to give.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
John I've never had anything like that physically, but mentally. when I first arrived in India on my own nothing was what i had learned it to be, food didn't look like food, traffic like traffic, etc. I was so frightened i think I literally lost my mind as suddenly I had no points of reference; nothiing to cling to. I went to sleep thinking I would never wake up. Your story reminded me of this. In the end an amazing fear to move through and survive?
Dale, dale. You deserve a break. We're asking pretty much of you too. I had that feeling the other day. Just didn't want to try. A rebellious little girl in there who has to pop out and say hello (and no) sometimes. Actually she has rather alot of ooomph too!
sat today. 20 mins. felt good. focused on death. lovely.
{{{Dale}}} Dale, I'm sorry things are hard right now. I've heard it in the undercurrent of your posts for a while now. The one thing I have come to count on in life, and it is a source of hope for me, has become a kind of faith, is that nothing stays the same.
Ruth, I've thought about your question, how does it affect our daily lives. Really, I can only put my finger on a subtle kind of relaxation, which I mostly notice by its being missing on the days I don't sit. We are entering what is for me the difficult season with the waning of the light. I am hoping that my daily meditation will help ease this at least a little. We shall see.
John, I'm not sure if this is the same experience, but when my focus is very, very good (and it often is horrid) I begin to feel almost like I'm swimming or flying the breath. Sense of external body drops away and I am "in" the breath, feeling only its movement. I surface later very relaxed indeed.
Any suggestions for preventing legs from falling asleep? Doesn't happen every time, but it's annoying when it does.
Dale: [[[Dale]]] it's awful when we hit those states. Please don't feel pressured by us here to be Mr Meditation. I'm just grateful that you started the website and are willing to keep posting each new day. Just do what you can, the irreducible minimum, and acknowledge yourself for doing that. And the poem is beautiful. I was once told "Waiting is an art form".
Everyone: it's been lovely catching up! Ruth's re-entry and all the other comments.
How is meditating regularly affecting my daily life. Well it's certainly making me realise how far I am from enlightenment! I am generally, but not always, calmer and more grounded after each session. During the sessions if I am really focussing on the experience I almost feel my diaphragm expanding widthways and a warmth around the heart area. This doesn't happen always, but when it does its beautiful.
On a more uncomfortable level, I have been questioning the meaning of life, and what I am here for. Big thoughts, and I think meditating regularly has put me in touch more than normal with these questions.
The last couple of nights I was staying with my very kind, but very atheist, scientist cousin. I almost felt guilty sitting in the morning in her house. I didn't tell her what I was doing - no point - and it felt very illicit!
Dale, Ugh, indeed. Sorry it's feeling like that. Yes, hold on to faith, especially faith in impermanence. And it does sound like there are some very concrete reasons re work, lack of sleep etc. I think you should regard turning up here and posting the new day as a practice and an offering in itself which you are sticking to. And if you ever really don't feel like it, I'm sure that, although we would miss you horribly, we would be fine at this stage and talk amongst ourselves for a day or two.
John, I haven't felt anything like you describe for ages, and rarely at all. But I've read about it a lot, and such sensations do seem to happen to a fair number of people and to be interesting but not particularly significant, just a reminder of how wonderfully strange and uncharted our own minds and bodies are! Something people are always telling me and I still struggle with it, but I'm sure it's true: words like 'correct' and 'should' are rarely a useful way of looking at anything :-)
Moose, the book that John recently recommended has a section on legs going to sleep, which says adjust your posture if you can and if it helps, and becoming more accustomed to the posture should help in time, but don't worry about it, it's not as alarming as it feels, more to do with stiffness than lack of blood circulation and quite harmless. I found this comforting, as my legs often go to sleep.
Oh and, yes, I've been sitting. 20 minutes this morning. The house next door but one is having major building work done and they start drilling every day at 8 am -an extra impetus to get up and meditate and get out of the house before that!
Mr Meditation? Oh, that gave me a (much-needed!) laugh. Not to worry, I've never thought of myself as such, and you all here are a refuge, not a responsibility. Given how work's going, being able to go prattle away somewhere as if I knew how something worked is a great comfort to me. I'm sleeping a bit better, actually. (My sleep has never been normal. Martha actually talked me into going to a sleep study center once, where they tape electrodes all over you and watch you all night, and the people there had never seen anyone like me -- they said I dived into REM sleep faster than anyone they'd ever seen, got my one session of deep sleep done right away, and didn't do any more of it all night -- so if I felt rested, there probably wasn't a big point in me staying in bed any longer than I did. I'm not at all confident that anyone really knows much about what sleep is & why we need it and how we need it, though, so I'm just not going to worry about it. Okay. This is the end of the parenthesis that started way of there somewhere.)
John, it's not at all uncommon to "lose your body" -- other people report perceptions of distortions of body shape and size, becoming very big or very small (I've had both those experiences.) I think you're taking the right course; they're just more raw experience, not to be rejected or treated as a special case in any way. Only a distraction if they draw your mind away from wherever you put it; and of course if they do the solution, as always, is simply to notice the distraction and bring your mind back.
I don't know anything about what to do about legs falling asleep. Except get up carefully :-)
Thanks, all of you, for your encouragement and support. It helps a lot.
John, I've had an occasional experience that "I" am "being breathed" rather than doing the breathing, which sounds very much like what you describe. I've also felt at times that my body was very heavy, or very large. The latter was just a distortion, a weirdness. But the first was useful and rather profound - not scary - and it showed me a different dimension of what "this thing I call "I" is. My teacher once told me to note these things, learn from them if there's somethign to learn, and move on, and I think that's right.
Dale - what Jean said. Take it easy and don't stress. You'll get back to it, that's what this is all about: on the path, stumbling off the path, back on the path...me too.
Wow - my "word verification" letters are amost a word: "snitdeve"!
Snitdeve, n. -- a fit of rebelliousness against one's better judgement; petulance, mulishness. (Derivation obscure, perhaps from snit diva? Other authorities suggest a conflation of snit and peeve)
11 Comments:
Ugh. Didn't sit last night. Didn't even try, much. Discouraged. Both work and life seem to be asking more of me than I have to give.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
John I've never had anything like that physically, but mentally. when I first arrived in India on my own nothing was what i had learned it to be, food didn't look like food, traffic like traffic, etc. I was so frightened i think I literally lost my mind as suddenly I had no points of reference; nothiing to cling to. I went to sleep thinking I would never wake up. Your story reminded me of this. In the end an amazing fear to move through and survive?
Dale, dale. You deserve a break. We're asking pretty much of you too. I had that feeling the other day. Just didn't want to try. A rebellious little girl in there who has to pop out and say hello (and no) sometimes. Actually she has rather alot of ooomph too!
sat today. 20 mins. felt good. focused on death. lovely.
xx
Sat 23 minutes.
{{{Dale}}}
Dale, I'm sorry things are hard right now. I've heard it in the undercurrent of your posts for a while now. The one thing I have come to count on in life, and it is a source of hope for me, has become a kind of faith, is that nothing stays the same.
Ruth, I've thought about your question, how does it affect our daily lives. Really, I can only put my finger on a subtle kind of relaxation, which I mostly notice by its being missing on the days I don't sit. We are entering what is for me the difficult season with the waning of the light. I am hoping that my daily meditation will help ease this at least a little. We shall see.
John, I'm not sure if this is the same experience, but when my focus is very, very good (and it often is horrid) I begin to feel almost like I'm swimming or flying the breath. Sense of external body drops away and I am "in" the breath, feeling only its movement. I surface later very relaxed indeed.
Any suggestions for preventing legs from falling asleep? Doesn't happen every time, but it's annoying when it does.
Dale, are you sleeping? I'm seeing posts marked 2am, 4am, 6am.
Back from a short break.
Dale: [[[Dale]]] it's awful when we hit those states. Please don't feel pressured by us here to be Mr Meditation. I'm just grateful that you started the website and are willing to keep posting each new day. Just do what you can, the irreducible minimum, and acknowledge yourself for doing that. And the poem is beautiful. I was once told "Waiting is an art form".
Everyone: it's been lovely catching up! Ruth's re-entry and all the other comments.
How is meditating regularly affecting my daily life. Well it's certainly making me realise how far I am from enlightenment! I am generally, but not always, calmer and more grounded after each session. During the sessions if I am really focussing on the experience I almost feel my diaphragm expanding widthways and a warmth around the heart area. This doesn't happen always, but when it does its beautiful.
On a more uncomfortable level, I have been questioning the meaning of life, and what I am here for. Big thoughts, and I think meditating regularly has put me in touch more than normal with these questions.
The last couple of nights I was staying with my very kind, but very atheist, scientist cousin. I almost felt guilty sitting in the morning in her house. I didn't tell her what I was doing - no point - and it felt very illicit!
Illicit meditation! I love it, ooh what a thrill! ;-)
Dale, Ugh, indeed. Sorry it's feeling like that. Yes, hold on to faith, especially faith in impermanence. And it does sound like there are some very concrete reasons re work, lack of sleep etc. I think you should regard turning up here and posting the new day as a practice and an offering in itself which you are sticking to. And if you ever really don't feel like it, I'm sure that, although we would miss you horribly, we would be fine at this stage and talk amongst ourselves for a day or two.
John, I haven't felt anything like you describe for ages, and rarely at all. But I've read about it a lot, and such sensations do seem to happen to a fair number of people and to be interesting but not particularly significant, just a reminder of how wonderfully strange and uncharted our own minds and bodies are! Something people are always telling me and I still struggle with it, but I'm sure it's true: words like 'correct' and 'should' are rarely a useful way of looking at anything :-)
Moose, the book that John recently recommended has a section on legs going to sleep, which says adjust your posture if you can and if it helps, and becoming more accustomed to the posture should help in time, but don't worry about it, it's not as alarming as it feels, more to do with stiffness than lack of blood circulation and quite harmless. I found this comforting, as my legs often go to sleep.
Oh and, yes, I've been sitting. 20 minutes this morning. The house next door but one is having major building work done and they start drilling every day at 8 am -an extra impetus to get up and meditate and get out of the house before that!
Mr Meditation? Oh, that gave me a (much-needed!) laugh. Not to worry, I've never thought of myself as such, and you all here are a refuge, not a responsibility. Given how work's going, being able to go prattle away somewhere as if I knew how something worked is a great comfort to me. I'm sleeping a bit better, actually. (My sleep has never been normal. Martha actually talked me into going to a sleep study center once, where they tape electrodes all over you and watch you all night, and the people there had never seen anyone like me -- they said I dived into REM sleep faster than anyone they'd ever seen, got my one session of deep sleep done right away, and didn't do any more of it all night -- so if I felt rested, there probably wasn't a big point in me staying in bed any longer than I did. I'm not at all confident that anyone really knows much about what sleep is & why we need it and how we need it, though, so I'm just not going to worry about it. Okay. This is the end of the parenthesis that started way of there somewhere.)
John, it's not at all uncommon to "lose your body" -- other people report perceptions of distortions of body shape and size, becoming very big or very small (I've had both those experiences.) I think you're taking the right course; they're just more raw experience, not to be rejected or treated as a special case in any way. Only a distraction if they draw your mind away from wherever you put it; and of course if they do the solution, as always, is simply to notice the distraction and bring your mind back.
I don't know anything about what to do about legs falling asleep. Except get up carefully :-)
Thanks, all of you, for your encouragement and support. It helps a lot.
John, I've had an occasional experience that "I" am "being breathed" rather than doing the breathing, which sounds very much like what you describe. I've also felt at times that my body was very heavy, or very large. The latter was just a distortion, a weirdness. But the first was useful and rather profound - not scary - and it showed me a different dimension of what "this thing I call "I" is. My teacher once told me to note these things, learn from them if there's somethign to learn, and move on, and I think that's right.
Dale - what Jean said. Take it easy and don't stress. You'll get back to it, that's what this is all about: on the path, stumbling off the path, back on the path...me too.
Wow - my "word verification" letters are amost a word: "snitdeve"!
Snitdeve, n. -- a fit of rebelliousness against one's better judgement; petulance, mulishness. (Derivation obscure, perhaps from snit diva? Other authorities suggest a conflation of snit and peeve)
I think we should launch a glossary of these word verification words... perhaps verifying the glossified verbifications via vote.
Beror, n. -- intense fear of bees. (Derivation thought to be from a conflation of bee and terror.)
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