Finding Deep Quiet
Sweet Peace #50: After a long history of meditation failure, a new possibility.
My meditation failure began in the early days of Transcendental Meditation, I was too poor to pay for the class and get my own personal mantra so I borrowed a popular one … Om mani padme hum. It was nice; I fell asleep.
I kept trying: focusing on breath, sitting in group sessions while my feet fell asleep, joining Siddha Yoga, chanting and meditating while trying to ignore the pains and itching that created distracting movements; attending a koan group, puzzling and meditating; zooming with a harp meditation group, sitting on the banks of a creek running through an aspen forest. Other than passing time, I felt little from these sessions.
However, I believe in the benefits of meditation, so I kept trying new things, frustrated by my efforts to clear my mind when what I was doing only seemed to rev it up and make it want paper to write on. Finally, I began to wonder if gratitude practice might yield some of the same benefits without the constant feelings of failure. Turning my mind back to what I was grateful for did seem to help and I began to do more research into mindfulness as a broader spectrum of calming practices.
Most meditation practices remove sensation, closing eyes, not moving, focusing on breath. I began to wonder … what if we deliberately engaged and paid deep attention to all of our senses … taste, smell, sight, touch, sound?
One morning I decided to mindfully eat a morning snack of greek yogurt with hand broken walnuts and a mixture of cinnamon and monk sugar (all of which provided a rush of textures, tastes, and sounds). I had about half a cup and slowly and patiently savored it for about 3 minutes when I noticed how silent my head had gone. I have a noisy head and the quiet surprised me.
I turned on a stop watch and twenty-two minutes later, finished the yogurt luxuriating in that deep quiet with an exquisite feeling of being present, aware, and relaxed. The feeling of peace and stillness that ran the length of my body felt like I was in a different world of time and sensation … finally, a sense of what people had been talking about.
Life got busy so that was a one-off event until this morning when I decided to see if I could do the same thing with a cup of tea. It took a minute or two of feeling the warmth, seeing thin steam vapors rise above the dark liquid, tasting the sweet tang of cinnamon; then the deep quiet arrived again. It felt like someone poured molasses across a rolling sea. I don’t know what the 37 billion cells in my body are up to, but it feels like they slowed down, softened, gently and quietly going about their tasks.
And, the truly odd thing is that I am writing this now, still in that quiet state. My fingers are typing; my mind is thinking, my entire body feels like it is in slow motion, but words are appearing on my screen …
Suddenly, there is a noise in the hallway, I inhale deeply and begin to return, although some of that peace and stillness lingers like the smell of incense long after it has been extinguished.
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Later I went exploring and found several sensory meditations that might be worth exploring. Here’s one:
A Meditation for Exploring Your Senses
Follow this guided meditation from Cara Bradley to notice your sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and thoughts.
What has been your experience with meditation?
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