Thanks to Dale for his astute comments yesterday. Last night I was feeling yucky, so I skipped my Wednesday night yoga class & was feeling bad about having not meditated. Today, I'm home sick thanks to the same yuckiness, so I have plenty of opportunity for stay-in-bed-and-breathe meditation.
It's funny how we make foolish distinctions, deciding on-the-mat meditation "counts" whereas other forms "don't." Why *shouldn't* three breaths be "enough"?
Thanks again, Dale...and hugs & good vibes to everyone.
Big hugs, Lorianne. Take good care of yourself and feel better soon.
I hope this isn't the result of looking at all those distorted reflections of yourself ("you'll get stuck like that", as my father used to say when I pulled faces...)
Hello to everyone and thnks so much to those who gave such helpful advice to me re. the dreaded PhD. I left a comment at the end yesterday.
Did a good meditation in yoga class last night although I had to keep dragging my mind back to the breath. Felt very energised at the end of the class and ran home part of the way! The sun has deigned to put in an appearance here in Yorkshire which has been a revelation - I needed sunglasses yesterday! (Possibly because I'm going blind due to usual lack of said sun.) Anyway, still very cold.
Hope you're feeling better soon, Lorianne. Enjoy the rest, huh. xo
And, Dale, as ever you come to our rescue. I've been meditating daily, but it's been difficult this past week. It's like I'm doing it, but not really doing it.
Something about engagement. It's important. In meditation and in my work. By focusing some good intent on my book, and even having it beside me while I sleep, seems to have re-charged my relationship to it. I finally have an ending, and not the one I expected, but it is congruent with the text. As I re-read, editing, how painful the narrative is. Yet with so many unfinished manuscripts and thesis's (two and two), bringing something to completion is of particular importance. That's a meditation in itself: the hexagram of completion.
So, Anna, and Beth, and Lorianne, everything you're saying about dissertations is also helping me with my project. Thank you...
Mmm, engagement. I hate it when I don't engage with things - discomfort, misery, stuckness. Learned a lot about the need for this. But still learning, and still a lot to learn, about engaging fully but 'lightly' - just this breath, just this moment, just this next thing - not taking that great pendulum swing straight from disengagement into bogged-down, weighed down, oppressive... At least beginning to have some conception of what it is I aspire to here.
Oh, Jean, no. Don't do that. Get bogged down. For me, as I ponder this, over-engagement is what bogs me down, being too obsessive, over-doing it, getting caught in 'must do' and 'I'll fail if I don't do it this specific way,' and then tying myself to it like the rock that that Greek guy got strapped to and had his liver pecked out all night only to have it re-grown in the morning so he could look forward to another night of painful pecking.
When I'm over-engaged, I don't know when to stop, when to let go. It's heavy and ponderous and eventually leads to stasis. When I've been a workaholic I'd say I was overengaged until I just snapped and couldn't do it any more.
Yoga and meditation was like that at the beginning. Copious hours every day. To the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Luckily meditation has a way of pacing itself, so you really can't overdo it.
Lack of engagement is my other problem. Not being present; drifting off in some other realm, as far away from Prometheus as is possible -:)
I'd like to be actively engaged with a sense of clarity and brightness.
8 Comments:
G'morning, all!
Thanks to Dale for his astute comments yesterday. Last night I was feeling yucky, so I skipped my Wednesday night yoga class & was feeling bad about having not meditated. Today, I'm home sick thanks to the same yuckiness, so I have plenty of opportunity for stay-in-bed-and-breathe meditation.
It's funny how we make foolish distinctions, deciding on-the-mat meditation "counts" whereas other forms "don't." Why *shouldn't* three breaths be "enough"?
Thanks again, Dale...and hugs & good vibes to everyone.
xoxoxo
hope you feel better soon, Lorianne.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Big hugs, Lorianne. Take good care of yourself and feel better soon.
I hope this isn't the result of looking at all those distorted reflections of yourself ("you'll get stuck like that", as my father used to say when I pulled faces...)
Hello to everyone and thnks so much to those who gave such helpful advice to me re. the dreaded PhD. I left a comment at the end yesterday.
Did a good meditation in yoga class last night although I had to keep dragging my mind back to the breath. Felt very energised at the end of the class and ran home part of the way! The sun has deigned to put in an appearance here in Yorkshire which has been a revelation - I needed sunglasses yesterday! (Possibly because I'm going blind due to usual lack of said sun.) Anyway, still very cold.
Go well, everyone.
Anna.
Hope you're feeling better soon, Lorianne. Enjoy the rest, huh. xo
And, Dale, as ever you come to our rescue. I've been meditating daily, but it's been difficult this past week. It's like I'm doing it, but not really doing it.
Something about engagement. It's important. In meditation and in my work. By focusing some good intent on my book, and even having it beside me while I sleep, seems to have re-charged my relationship to it. I finally have an ending, and not the one I expected, but it is congruent with the text. As I re-read, editing, how painful the narrative is. Yet with so many unfinished manuscripts and thesis's (two and two), bringing something to completion is of particular importance. That's a meditation in itself: the hexagram of completion.
So, Anna, and Beth, and Lorianne, everything you're saying about dissertations is also helping me with my project. Thank you...
Back now to the process of engagement...
Hugs all.
Mmm, engagement. I hate it when I don't engage with things - discomfort, misery, stuckness. Learned a lot about the need for this. But still learning, and still a lot to learn, about engaging fully but 'lightly' - just this breath, just this moment, just this next thing - not taking that great pendulum swing straight from disengagement into bogged-down, weighed down, oppressive... At least beginning to have some conception of what it is I aspire to here.
Oh, Jean, no. Don't do that. Get bogged down. For me, as I ponder this, over-engagement is what bogs me down, being too obsessive, over-doing it, getting caught in 'must do' and 'I'll fail if I don't do it this specific way,' and then tying myself to it like the rock that that Greek guy got strapped to and had his liver pecked out all night only to have it re-grown in the morning so he could look forward to another night of painful pecking.
When I'm over-engaged, I don't know when to stop, when to let go. It's heavy and ponderous and eventually leads to stasis. When I've been a workaholic I'd say I was overengaged until I just snapped and couldn't do it any more.
Yoga and meditation was like that at the beginning. Copious hours every day. To the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Luckily meditation has a way of pacing itself, so you really can't overdo it.
Lack of engagement is my other problem. Not being present; drifting off in some other realm, as far away from Prometheus as is possible -:)
I'd like to be actively engaged with a sense of clarity and brightness.
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