The good news is that if you do meditate or are learning to, this stuff may nurture and challenge your practice and your soul as much as it does mine.
A great 'for instance' is the bit below from Pema Chodron (When Things Fall Apart) that we used as lectio in the Monday Mindfulness Group this morning. What Pema says can be extremely counter-intuitive unless we're practicing and 'seeing' this stuff for ourselves.
The kind of meditation Pema assumes we're doing here is Insight Meditation. In this context 'Insight' has less to do with 'epiphany' and more to do with simply seeing what's right before our eyes--direct perception rather than something inferred or something derived from reasoning. To meditate this way is simply to 'see for ourselves' whether something is true and real. Or not. Seeing for ourselves leads to lots of epiphanies, but first comes the donkey work--basic, straightforward practice.
In the four paragraphs below she's pointing out an inevitable challenge we come to in our adventures in meditation--this grand experiment with seeing clearly, loving dearly, and letting be. Pema, as usual, is offering encouragement big enough to meet the challenge.
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We
don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to
becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery,
because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality,
like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern.
It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of
attaining resolution
As
human beings, not only do we seek resolution, we also feel that we deserve
resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from
resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better that
that…an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.
Meditation
provides a way for us to train in the middle way—in staying right on the spot.
We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. What we usually
call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama
that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let thoughts come
and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline
prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.
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If you'd like a rich refresher on how to DO Mindfulness Meditation, Gil Fronsdal, of the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA, has a five minute jam-packed, straightforward audio primer HERE.
