a search for sanity or..........

• Meditation made easy and fun

  Posted: August 23, 2008, 5:57 pm by gal africana

  I'd always heard of the benefits of meditation and I know people who live and breathe those benefits. From my experience people who meditate are happier, more focused, creative, abundant and balanced...they seem to have a natural proclivity to live life to the fullest and have fun doing it.
  
  But I still had this picture of people who meditate as being Gandhi-scrawny, dressed in shabby linens, giving up anything remotely pleasurable and dying to save a cow...while walking on hot coals (hmmm...ok so I've walked on hot coals but all the rest is STILL up there for me lol). I always thought meditation was about sitting still in that excruciatingly painful cross legged stance, enduring all forms of discomfort for unbearably long periods of time. Even then, I was curious enough to want to try it.
  
  My first attempts at a yoga class were not helped at all by the teacher saying that we should STOP our thoughts!!! All that happened was that I then started thinking about stopping my thoughts...which led to me chastising myself about not being able to stop thinking...and then frustration over my complete utter failure at achieving calmness. I believe I was happier and calmer BEFORE attending that particular class!
  
  My second brush with meditation was much more successful and rewarding. As it is, I'm finding it to be a very great resource in living a conscious and joyous life.
  
  3 easy steps to successful mediation
  
  

  1. Find a quiet spot and a comfortable position to be still in. The position doesn't matter, it just has to be comfortable. I usually do it first thing in the morning when I'm still in bed. That way my whole day is centered.
     
  2. Be still, close your eyes, and focus on your natural breathing rhythm. Focus on the air as it enters your nose, fills your lungs, as your chest expands...and then contracts to let the air out. Thoughts will inevitably pop up, and focus will be lost, but always coming back to feeling the body breathe...feeling your body live...feeling the body nurture itself...seek to give to itself.
  3. Enjoy this state for 15 minutes everyday...sometimes the body twitches or feels numb, one can also get as sensation of pins and needles or like the body is swaying. The key is to experience everything and let it be. The result is a gentle calmness, clarity and subtle joy.

  Meditation is NOT about not thinking. Thing is, we cant not think. We can however be in a state of observing. Like listening to our thoughts...which we do ALL the time, only difference when meditating is that we don't engage the thought by continuing the train of thought...the thought comes and is allowed to go just as easily as it came. Meditation is about allowing what is happening to happen...without stopping it or enabling it...so a thought about fixing the roof is not followed by a thought about calling the repairers or when to do it...the thought is just observed and acknowledged...this becomes easy because the focus of the thinking mind is on the natural act of breathing. Isn't it fabulous that our bodies breathe be default? Well that default process is the focus of meditation and focus to it calms and soothes and brings wellness.

• Of the journey

  Posted: August 23, 2008, 3:26 pm by gal africana

  I couldn't have said it better if I tried:
  
  “The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.” Bob Moawad
  I'm feeling very empowered by messages that preach self-responsibility and urge one to look inward in every single situation. I'm surprised that I find relief in taking responsibility for EVERYTHING that has happened in my life, given how much indignant energy and how much egoic manic power I'd get from rants about my mum, ex, bitchy girlfriends or nasty bosses...etc
  Isn't it true that one FEELS elevated and bigger physically when one is blaming others, its an energy that literally inflates and gives some temporary relief...that feeling of being right and the other wrong...even though thats not the label one is using.
  
  What I love about being responsible for every experience in my life, be it someone insulting me, hurting me or buying me flowers...is that it puts ME in the all important DRIVERS seat! I don't have to take anything I don't want to, and I can orchestrate more of what I want. Things have their natural flow...and I cant nor have I any wish to control life or anyone else...but I decide what my response is based on what I want my life experience to be. BRILLIANT :-)
  
  Cant believe I'm learning this now!!!
  
  I'm learning that this process is one that occurs every minute of the day!!! When I'm alone and most importantly in my interactions with others. I have to keep grounding myself, doing mini meditations and the asking, "what is my intention/ what do I want?" This technique is so POWERFUL...because I'm finding that everything that happens from that space is something that is in line with those things I hold dearest and that I enjoy the most.
  
  I unintentionally set my intentions to experience joy, love, fun, creativity and growth, after my break-up last year. I was completely clueless at the time, miserable (though ignorant of the fact), in denial and in victim mentality...blaming certain people for certain outcomes in my life.
  
  Interesting really, looking back, knowing what I know now...there is something so dis-empowering about giving others so much power...something dis-empowering in expecting others to make you happy, love you, enable you, appreciate or validate you or letting others have the power to make you miserable, hate you or devalue you. I'm learning to identify the power others have over me, the emotions they evoke, positive or negative, to give those experiences their rightful place, ask to learn the intended lesson, and THEN to always return to my own frame of reference..."what do I want/what is my intention".
  
  I can now see how everything has lined up for me to experience my intention. My biggest effort in all this time has mainly gone towards knowing and loving myself unconditionally :-) And its the biggest gift ever to witness this person I'm becoming as a result of this :-)
  
  I'm enjoying the journey!!!
  
  “Life is not a journey to the grave with intentions of arriving safely in a pretty well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming ... WOW! What a ride!”Uknown?
  
  "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time".
  T. S. Elliot
  
  “There is no better time than right now to be happy.Happiness is a journey, not a destination.So work like you don't need money.Love like you've never been hurt, and, Dance like no one's watching...”Uknown?
  
  
  

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes