My practice began many years ago after a training in Transcendental Medication. I meditated for 2 decades 5 days a week for 20 minutes. Then, I began running and felt that it was creating the same sense of peace and creativity, although I know that does not totally replace meditation. At the time, I had to choose which to do in the morning before work and I chose running. More recently, I have returned to it. We all know that meditation can be difficult to attempt at first and we feel like we fail nearly every time. It does get better and often peace and relaxation are a great gift we give ourselves everyday.
Now as a more practiced meditator, I share with you here my own experience as best I can. Like meditation itself, words are difficult to describe the experience.
First, of course, we find a quiet and comfortable place to sit and begin to feel present to our breath. When in doubt or in thought, that’s where we should go. Back to basics. Back to breath.
I close my eyes and become aware of a dark blankness before me. But most of the time, it contains thought. I have even thought about what to write in this blog as a try not to think. Quickly, I refocus on breath and what is in front of me in the vastness of the blankness. I allow myself to slip into it, always returning to the vastness when I find myself thinking/planning/conversing/working in my head.
Then, I allow my eyes to become slack- really slack- , then my face, often allowing my jaw to slacken and mouth to open. This brings me a deeper vastness. And vastness is an inadequate word to use, but I can think of no other except one that I will discuss later. Use blankness or deepness or vastness or which ever word you think best allows you into the place you want to go or the place that invites you. But if I call this place a word during meditation, it means I am thinking again.
Thinking is the distractor of meditation. It’s the place we spend most of our day and it’s easy to allow it to interfere. However, I go to breath and ‘see’ the vastness of the blackness and go there, my face and eyes relaxed and somehow it seems that I flow more deeply and it seems to me that I am looking further downward into something darker and quieter and more meaningful.
Sometimes, I repeat the word ‘love’ or ‘peace’ or ‘gratitude’ (although ‘gratitude’ means something different for me than most people, I think. I rarely give thanks or conjure gratitude. For me, it’s a way of being all the time. Again words limit. Let’s discuss that in another blog). If I do imagine love or peace, the surroundings of the vastness often engulf me. I’m settled in, but my mind wants to work and I catch myself thinking about the things I need to do that day. I return to love or peace or breath and often, the vastness returns and offers.
I try not to use phrases like “I seek love’ or ‘peace surrounds me’ or ‘I am a part of nature’. I try not to see the love or peace as out there. I see myself as indistinguishable from it or in it seamlessly. Pronouns especially the one that refers to self takes me out of the vastness because it means that I am separate from it. There is me and there is it. How can I be an ‘I’ if I’m trying to feel one with the vastness of peace. It causes separation and what I seek in meditation is oneness, flow, connection to all there is.
There is one short phrase I prefer to describe this phenomenon. Once I found it, my meditation and understanding changed.
Read Part 2 of this blog to find out the phrase that connects and removes barriers. The phrase that invites.
Part 2 of The Meditation of Vastness
For a long time, I imagined myself connected to everything, especially if I am meditating outside. These things would include the trees, dirt, sky, birds, all of it. Then, I became present to being part of sound, light, and wind. I’ve been able to be part of the wind and am working on sound and light. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel the light or am not aware of the sounds. But one day while running, I found myself being the wind. It’s delightful and allows me to flow together with it. It’s difficult to explain how that works.
A word I was using at the time is ‘everything’. I was part of everything (the ‘I’ word again). ‘Everything’ represented, well, everything. But somehow, there was an inkling that there was more to it. ‘Everything’ was every ‘thing’. It felt like division again, like there were things out there that united to become everything. It seemed like maybe I could choose this thing, but leave out that thing. Maybe some of the things were good and some things were ‘bad’. Some things were over there and some things were over here. That’s judgement and division.
So it came to me that a better way to think about ‘everything’ without division would be expressed as ‘The This’. ‘The This’ has not judgment. It’s just the way it is. There is no division in ‘This’. ‘This’ is a vastness of completeness, an allowance for all. “The This’ is the invitation without any value. But remember, words force choice and are limited to definition. But you get to find the words/thoughts/feelings/insights that settle you into the vastness with words and non-words as you like. It’s your mind. You know what works.
Sometimes, I allow thought in intentionally. I think best in this state of consciousness and answers or plans come to me in a more creative way. The possibility of all possibilities becomes available to me. At any given moment, all possibility is available to us. There exist millions of possibilities that can fill the next moment or perhaps more than one. During meditation, all possibility just shows up and allows me to think in ways I cannot normally think. When all possibility is available and we are not limited to our old thoughts or thinking patterns, is when we become our most creative selves. Sometimes it just shows up and other times, we get to choose the possibility.
Other times, I see – and therefore, think about- people who love me. My parents, my siblings, and my husband who have passed along. Dogs I owned. Friends and neighbors who love me. In The This, I love everyone and everyone loves me. When The This happens for me, It brings all possibility for love and
peace.
I have some thoughts on loving and inviting The This. If The This includes all possibility, it also includes ‘bad’ things and violent people. The This I usually experience connects me with all that is loving and peaceful. But I also practice including the bad things and people. Read Part 3. You’ll see how that’s done.
At least for me.
