Day 27: Meditation Challenge ~ What Does Calm Look Like?

Welcome, to my 28-Meditation Challenge.

Ok, still having technical difficulties! Sorry! Even our server does not understand why the MP3 of the "Meditation Challenge Conference Call" can't be uploaded. Now they are "troubleshooting." Argh...... Breathe....We'll keep trying. :-)

So for those of who you are dying to listen to the call, here is how you can listen to the recording now. (213) 289-0503. Code: 754658. You will have to pay regular long distance charges, unless you have free LD calling. Enjoy! Hopefully tomorrow I'll have good news.

Today, I have a meditation treat. A testimony to the power of meditation by one of our Challenge participants! 

Blogger, Michele Fischer, contacted me about what meditation means to her and how it has impacted her life. I appreciated her perspective so much. It's fresh, insightful, and empowering! Thank you, Michele, for being part of the Challenge and sharing your thoughts with us!

What Calm Looks Like

by Michele Fischer

In my studies with yoga, meditation and mindfulness I have created in my head this picture of what calm is, what centered and at peace looks like.

Generally the picture is something like this:
A beautiful meadow with a yogini sitting-cross-legged in the middle, eyes closed able to walk through life in this exact state. He never raises his voice, never loses patience and enjoys a kind of euphoria on earth.

It’s no wonder why I found it nearly impossible to create a daily meditation practice when I had set as a goal an almost impossible intention. Was it truly my goal to be in a state of peace and calm or was I trying to achieve a state that would be void of any sort of conflict and turmoil? When I stopped to really think about what it was I was trying to achieve through my spiritual practice and what I truly wanted, meditation took on an entirely new meaning for me.

As spiritual beings we are here to experience life in a way that can only be done by, well, living it—both the good and the bad. I’ve started to slowly, very slowly, realize that being centered, focused and spiritual has nothing at all to do with our circumstances and everything to do with our perspective and reaction to what life hands us.

For me, my true lesson came when I stopped focusing on having a life that would be void of conflict and discourse and rather looked at how I was handling things, what my internal dialog was when these things occurred and ultimately how I would like to handle such situations in the future.

One of my biggest turning points related to a normally touchy subject for me and that was my job. It has always been my dream to be a writer and I viewed whatever job I had as hindrance to that goal. My inner monologue would go something like this, “Someday I want to have a job that allows me to write, to spend my days doing what I love!” While focusing on the writing was a positive, the way in which I was doing it wasn’t and by just shifting and refocusing my eyes a tiny bit, the whole world changed the way it looked to me.

Instead of saying, “someday when I can write,” I started writing. There was nothing preventing me from doing this except for my preconceived notion, story if you will, of what being a writer had to look like. I wanted to write so I did. I also started to make my job my own, doing things in such a ways as they were in align with my own skills, attributes and talents and as a result the most amazing thing happened; my job no longer became a source of stress! Instead of it being this time consuming thing that prevented me from writing it was the thing that allowed me the ability to write.

My meditation practice changed also. As a result of taking note of the inner monologue I was having, I realized that my lapse with meditation was nothing more than my own preconceived notions keeping me from meditating. In my mind you needed to be sitting in a space set up for meditation, candles lit, soft music playing and you needed to sit for a minimum of 20 minutes to calm and center yourself. Instead, I started using my moments of awareness, when I was taking note of that inner dialog to stop, breathe and ground myself-you know, meditate!

So while I do still love a good candle lit, incense burning meditation session I have brought meditation into the “real world” for me and made it a part of not only my life but in how I approach the people and events in that life.

Visit Michele Fischer's blog, to read more of her thoughts. 

See what I mean? Fresh .... insightful ... empowering. Thank you, again, Michele, this was just great!

As always, I welcome your comments ...
Blessings,

Jan

Read on ...

From Where I Sit — Day 27,  My Meditation Experience

I sat zazen with Jundo again. Is there such a thing as bad zazen ("sitting practice") he asks? I loved his perspective on resistance and busy mindedness. I sat in silence after that. Click here. 

Resources:

I've appreciated the music of Deva Premal for many years. Her use of mantra and chant has often deepened my meditation practice. You may enjoy this video of her sharing and singing the Gayatri Mantra to a talking circle of teen girls. Her translation of the Gayatri Meditation: "May all beings living on the planet be in light."

Inspiration:

From one of my very favorite coffee table books:

As the Buddhist author, Richard St. Ruth says, 'Buddha means "awakened", so when we start to meditate we are working towards an awakening. However, if we assume, as in Zen, that we are Buddha from the beginning, then it becomes a question of staying in that time or moment so that we can reawaken our Buddhahood. As practitioners become more experienced, they are able to stay in a  contemplative state regardless of circumstance or time. This awakeness therefore transcends both physical and mental states. One of the principal teachings of Tibetan Buddhism  uses the analogy of a bird flying through space. This is how we should live our lives, by staying in the moment and not leaving tracks.'

~From Spaces for Silence, by Alen Macweeney and Caro Ness