I used to go to a meditation group once a week. Our leader turned down the lights and in her
soothing voice told us to imagine a beautiful field of wildflowers. I internally griped, "Why is it always
a meadow?", but I complied.
I imagined pretty flowers. Eventually,
we progressed out of the meadow and my grouchy thoughts of sunburn and I found
a calm in myself. I suppose my
grouchiness and fears of sunburn were a metaphor for the crap I carried in my
head most days. I got a lot of
positives from meditating and our group became good friends.
The place we met was right next to train tracks. We all giggled the first time a train went
by during our meditation and rattled the windows. Our patient leader gently suggested we could put all our problems
on the train and listen to those problems being carried away. This happened many times. I dutifully put my cares on the trains. I can't see or hear a train anymore without
smiling and feeling my blood pressure drop.
Meditation comes in many forms. What I've described above is a guided meditation. Sometimes I sit at the river and watch the
water go by until I find inner peace. Art
and ditch digging can be meditations. Sometimes
I just pay attention to my breathing (which is probably healthy for everyone in
Covid-19 days). Some people focus on
thinking of nothing (something I find absolutely impossible). Some people do yoga or walk. Whatever works. I don't think there's one right way to go about it.
For myself, I start out by checking in with myself. How stressed am I in the moment? I give myself a numerical grade. A good day is a 10 or less. Often, my score is 5,000. I start counting backwards, sometimes jumping
down 100 points at a time until I can feel the stress leaving my body and my
breath evening out. I notice places
where I'm sore or tight and concentrate on relaxing those areas.
I often think of meditation as an awake dream. I get myself relaxed enough to see where my
brain will go. Like a night dream,
answers to issues can be seen through a different light. Sometimes the answers are so obvious I
wonder why I didn't see them in the first place, but I doubt I'm the only one
who tells myself what I'm feeling instead of actually feeling my feelings.
For example, I go about my day and think about the things
I'm doing. Everything's fine, so why do
I feel so stressed? After calming
myself I can see that I'm worried about the state of the world and
individuals I care about. In my regular
thoughts, I tell myself I can't do anything about those things so quit thinking
about them. In my meditative mind, I honor
these feelings. It isn't an issue of
fixing situations, it's finding my place in them. Maybe I can't help someone with health issues or a drug problem,
but I can go to my food giveaway and feed other drug addicts and elderly people. I feel good to do that. Those are people who want the help. I feel more peaceful which is better for
everybody because being wound like a spring about problems I can't solve just
makes me testy to be around.
Yes, I have shown you this train before, but having had to
paint it twice for this painting it only seems fair to post it twice. You can see the whole painting here. I've done more Barbie paintings but haven't
seen any appropriate words to show them off yet.
I can hear trains at my house. They're carrying away my problems. How do you meditate?
