Meditation

Everything Matters

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The stance “Everything Matters” and “Nothing Matters” are actually a part of the same polarity. They are each the extreme end on the spectrum of what matters.

After sitting days on end in silent meditation I had come to the conclusion that nothing really mattered in my mind. However, even though in my mind I thought that, I still strove to do my very best in my interactions, I began an open and honest relationship with myself about my emotions, and started really taking better care of my body of what I consumed.

So if the spectrum of nothing matters and everything matters are on the same line, then I can in turn think about the fact that everything matters, as I do live with the underlying idea that indeed, everything that I do, think, say, feel, matters. For some reason though in my mind I defaulted to “nothing matters” even though my actions showed that “everything matters”.

Now that this thought has arisen in my reality again, I am choosing consciously to also align my mind with the thought that I have been practicing that Everything Matters. Everything I do matters. Everything I say matters. Everything I think matters. Everything I feel matters. Everything I am matters. Everything matters. This is how I change the world.

Training the Mind

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In the current series of visualisations I’m doing via Headspace, creativity is the focus. The idea is to create a light, bright, warm, expansive state in the mind and to feel comfortable in that. It starts with visualising a creative spark where I can feel my breath and then it grows to encompass my body, the room, our house, our neighbourhood, the state, the country, the globe, and into the universe. It’s beautiful. It feels great.

It is mentioned how great ideas and problem solving happens when our mind is relaxed but still alert. This is where big thoughts happen in the shower, or out for a walk, or while eating a blueberry pie. That last reference is from a film I watched years ago where the protagonist was suggested to stop and eat a slice of pie so the answer would come to him, and of course it did.

It’s funny how when we try to chase an idea down with the mind, it’s almost like chasing a rabbit, you get closer and closer and then you can sometimes catch it, but other times you just exhaust yourself in trying to find the way to catch it rather than actually catching it and working with it from there. The other option is that to quietly hold out a carrot or piece of alfalfa and watch the rabbit come to you. Drawing the rabbit in, drawing the idea in and giving it a safe space is really effective. Training my mind in this way gives me the “pull” factor, the attraction factor that I am looking for to create a space for ideas, solutions, dreams, and plans to form safely in big bright ways.

As an earnest student, I am taking this in and getting excited about the possibilities of what it means and how to apply it. During the day I am incredibly more present, and I can feel that expansion and calmness with me. I love that there can be the wonderful “AND” involved in life. I love that I can seek to be energised and calm, relaxed and alert, loving and strong, rich and ethical. This is my new realm of being, including the AND in my life with an expansive, bright, clear mind that helps me to best share my merits with others through creative problem solving and solutions.

Morning Meditation

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How sweet is a morning meditation upon waking up. How lovely it is. It truly feels like a sweet start to the day. I’ve been meditating with the Headspace App and have really been enjoying it. I have even gone so far as to buy a year long subscription because I see the value it has and has added to my life.

Starting out the day with clarity of mind and thought, is a massive improvement of waking up and just scrambling to get ready. For me it usually involves having to quickly get up because the baby is in need of attention in the other room. The baby doesn’t wake up gently and quietly. Rather he wakes up with a full force of why are you leaving me in here, come get me now! That can be a jarring morning experience one that sets the day on high alert, and a bit of grogginess.

On days where I wake up naturally before baby wakes up, and have the time to stretch and meditate, the day is exponentially better. I feel ready, prepared, and very clear, it’s wonderful and a remarkable difference.

The key is when doing a morning meditation, that I’ve just woken up from a night of dreams, and it is so easy to slip into the meditative state because my mind hasn’t already been filled with the trappings of the day. I haven’t talked to anyone, I haven’t emailed, or read anything, I just go right back into my own mind and body, it’s beautiful, and easy.

When sitting a course at Vipassana Centres, every morning I would wake and meditate immediately. It was a part of the routine. I would literally realise I was awake and then promptly sit up in my bed right there, and close my eyes, focus on my breath and start my meditation practice. After my own personal meditation, then I would go to the hall or to my own meditation cell and continue my practice. All of this well before breakfast time. I could get in a good couple of hours first thing in the morning this way.

The whole purpose of sitting for meditation at a centre like that is so that there are no distractions so the meditator can solely focus on their practice. The reality of being at home and being a house person rather than say a monk, is that life is so much more complex, and I accept that. Having a little slice of morning meditation before getting into the day, feels like luxury to me and I’ll take more of that please.

Meditation, My beginnings

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Meditation has been something I’ve done since 2008, so a good 8 years now. I started out with teaching myself how to meditate while living in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I would lay down, with ear plugs in, and focus on one word, and then just keep going back to it it. This was effective and was a great start.

Vipassana was introduced into my world in early 2009 when I ended up staying about 2 months at the Vipassana Centre in North Fork, California. I had returned from Brazil and was seriously needing to find my own centre, funny that North Fork just happens to be the exact centre of California too. All so very fitting. In Vipassana, specifically in a 10 day silent meditation course, you think of nothing. For the first 3 days you focus only on your breath, narrowing it down the little triangle under your nose. Then for the next 7, the whole practice is scanning the body from head to toe, toe to head, and spending time on the painful/hard/heavy places before moving on. Then the very last 24 hours, Metta gets introduced which is like the salve after doing this major work. Jetta is all about loving kindness. The best way I found for practicing Metta was to focus on myself being vibrant, healthy, in a place that I have been, or an imagined state of being where I am full of happiness. After I really feel that, then I would think about others in the same way, imagining them full of health, being so vibrant, and with the biggest smiles ever. I would think about Goenka the teacher, I would think of dear friends, I would think about family, and then people I have had challenges with in the same light, then I would think of people I have seen but have never actually spoken to, because loving kindness extends to everyone always. It’s a lovely practice. When doing it all together in a single “sit” you start for a few minutes on your breath, then move to scanning the body as the bulk of the practice, then at the end a few minutes of Metta. Any time the mind wanders, just bring it back, always bring it back. We would sit like this for hours on end for days at a day. Overall I have sat more than 50 days in silence like this, and have served on courses where I have meditated 6 or more hours a day while serving others. It was the ultimate reset and what I needed. I did the majority of this kind of meditation from 2009 until 2011 when I had moved to Australia.

I have kept the scanning part of Vipassana very much with me even if I haven’t sat in the centre, it just became a way of life, even though I certainly never sat the two hours a day they recommend after leaving. That was too much for me outside of the centre world.

Life is Pretty Great

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There is nothing like getting away on holiday for long enough to fully appreciate your normal life. What a blessed life I live! Truly. There is an ample amount of love flowing through my family, we are all healthy, happy, enjoying one another. My husband has a day job that he really enjoys where he gets to make a difference and has some authority and responsibility. I have been really In-Joy-ing being a mother lately, being the person who is with our baby, looking after him, growing with him, discovering and revelling in the curiosity of life, it’s wonder-filled for certain!

We have a great place to live, the weather in autumn in Australia is perfect, it’s always around the mid-20s, with blue skies and some clouds, it’s divine. Our backyard is plenty big enough to house Mrs Brown and Mrs White our chickens and their coop. I just love watching them peck around and do their chicken thing of scratching, putting their bums up high and pecking into the ground. It’s so funny to witness them being who they are in their true chicken essence.

Our house is great, everything works and it’s in good repair. Our furniture and everything inside of our house feels comfortable and I have a spacious kitchen to prepare meals and get creative with our food. Our bed is so comfortable and I sleep so well in it.

The recent restart of meditating at least once, usually twice a day has really helped me and I need to remember, that by doing so, it brings such clarity, peace, presence and appreciation in my life. That along with travel and a whole heap of love, and life well and truly is great.

Yay!

Gratitude and Meditation

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It’s incredible feeling grace, gratitude.

I have worked with gratitude for a number of years intentionally now. Currently I am doing a 21 day Meditation that is being conducted globally online, it’s amazing to use the power of the internet in such profound and expansive ways.  Since I am in Australia, I get the meditation at night before I go to bed versus first thing in the morning, which I think is brilliant. So I listen and meditate, then fall into a nice slumber and allow my subconscious to really play around and absorb what I’ve just experienced. It’s wonderful.

The idea of gratitude being a loop is really interesting to me. I do very much believe that what you are, you give, and you will receive. I just hadn’t thought about it returning from the thing that I am feeling the gratitude for. More that I give out gratitude by feeling it in my heart, in my body, feeling all that energy of love and warmth and goodness, and putting it out to the world, or to the plant I’m gazing at, or to the loved one that I am thinking of. I hadn’t intentionally thought of it then returning from that specific person, place, thing or idea, back to me.

How powerful gratitude is.