This week we are very happy to announce that we are expanding our sittings to 11 PM Eastern Time, and we offer a warm welcome to Thanatokephaloides who will be sitting in as Co-host from 9:30 to 11 PM. For some reason I am reminded of a sign I saw years ago in a local Salvation Army Store, “We Ain’t Movin’ We’re Just Improvin’. :-)
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 7:30 to 11:00 PM Eastern Time. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
Sangha Co-hosts for meditation are:
7:30 - 10:00 Ooooh and davehouck
9:30 - 11:00 thanatokephaloides
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In our drive to transcend our small selves, sometimes I think we forget that we are not meant to get rid of our humanity. The Zen aphorism, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water,” is a powerful pointer showing that it is not enough to transcend our small selves, after that it is necessary to bring whatever it is we’ve realized into the world through our day to day lives. When we look at it this way, awakening almost seems to be the easy part of this path.
The rubber really meets the road in our personal lives, when we try to live the truth we’ve realized and discover that we still get angry, we still have desires, people still irritate the hell out of us, things are still not the way we want, and dammit that pisses us off! Perhaps one of the greatest frustrations many of us will experience is having some measure of spiritual realization and discovering that all our problems are still with us.
It can also be a cause for deep confusion for us as spiritual practitioners when we expect that we should be able to go into the world and automatically be able to demonstrate how perfectly spiritual we’ve become. “How can I still be having all these difficulties even though I know through experience I am beyond all this???” “How can this one issue still be coming up, when I have dealt with it so many times already???” In my own case I can trace these expectations back to teachers of Vedanta saying we would become saints and superhumans. It led to some pretty lofty expectations.
Depending on the amount of healing we may have already accomplished, the need to integrate what we’ve realized and bring that into the world can require some deep personal healing on our parts. And as long as we put it off, the scripts of our conditioning, assumptions, erroneous beliefs, in fact all our emotional baggage, are still buried deeply within us, still running our lives and keeping us from living the truth we know.
Unfortunately I have no easy answers or suggestions. Perhaps we might start by promising to be utterly honest with ourselves about what is arising within us. We might begin by promising ourselves that we will not lie to ourselves about anything. Perhaps we could commit to sitting with ourselves for a few minutes every day, and just offer gentle, unconditional tenderness and acceptance to whatever we find.
We might try paying attention to our bodies, finding a place where there is pain, tightness or we feel a restriction. Ofter it unconditional warmth and acceptance and just sit with it, without resisting. If we feel a softening in our hearts, or in the area which we are holding in attention ask it, “Who are you?” Then wait; whatever arises, we offer it love, warmth, gentleness, acceptance, and honor it for coming forward into our awareness. Let it express and show what ever it wants us to see or know.
This is, perhaps, one way we might begin the process of removing the barriers which stand in the way of our being able to live our day to day lives from the truth we know.