“Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.” - Liz Gilbert
Meditation. Staying still. Trying to find inner peace. Definitely not my cup of tea. This was my hypothesis way before I tried my new thing for the day on Tuesday and it was proved and confirmed immediately.
I love Eat.Pray.Love and I love Liz Gilbert. The book has been my guiding light through my deep in the abyss of crap times and I've always wanted to have a life adventure similar to Gilberts. In her book she talks describes in-depth her experience in an Ashram in India where she tries to "pray" and get in touch with her spirituality. Although I could relate to almost every thing she talks about in the book, I found it hard to connect with all the karmic, yogic, spiritual experiences.
Lately my family has really gotten into meditation too. They had a really tough year last year and the holosync meditating techniques have all helped in some way. I usually just mock them as I see them "sleeping" whilst they listen to the holosync CDs. I "meditate" enough I thought.. at least 8 hours a day and very soundly too ;).
Was I just being like the fox who said the grapes were too sour? Cynicism without first-hand experience is dangerous so I decided to give it a try. I'm not doing anything much anyways these days. May as well do absolutely nothing for 30 minutes to give this "Zen habit" a shot.
I plugged in my iPod and started listening to the 30 minute holosync audio tape...which basically sounds like rainfall. Yep you have to lie still, listen to 30 minutes of rainy pitter patter and free your mind and focus on just one thing/word/action and keep repeating it to yourself and take in deep breaths. With a mind as scattered as mine, that is HARD. I'm the type of person who is ALWAYS all over the place, I'm always multi-tasking, I always have a thousand tabs opened on mty laptop, I suck at one-one talks just because I'm easily distracted from one thing and person to next. Being an aquarius which apparently is an air sign and like air, I'm free flowing and constantly circulating. So yep 30 minutes of being still and listening to pitter patter and bells go off every now and then was much harder than I expected. I just couldn't reach my nirvana, far from it, I could barely focus that one word without thinking about what's for lunch or what was going to happen in Glee or how the monks in Tibet meditate or future travel plans to Tibet...but I somehow managed to gather myself for the last 7-8 minutes and did feel a sense of calmness come over me. This was what a conscious state of uncosciousness felt like. It didn't last long but yep it was strange and refreshing, albeit short-lived feeling that a spiritually ignorant person like me finds hard to articulate.
"The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement.” That's what the zen masters have to say about meditation and being still. Like the L&P advertisement says, I can do nothing much but I'm not very good at doing nothing...I'm still a long way from life's high achievement but hopefully will get there some day!
Nirvana, some day, some way. Not for now for sure.
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