Having the shakes in the morning after meditation and chanting
Phew, I meditated and chanted so hard and long last night, I ended up dreaming an entirely different life overnight, one of those long dreams that seems to be many times longer than the actual time you slept, in this case several days of leading another life. As I write this, it's now more than one hour after I woke up from those dreams, and my body and hands are still shaking from the experience.
Calming phrases before evening meditation or sleep
Through most of my life I've used my thoughts to try to calm myself down before going to sleep at night, and before evening meditations. I thought I'd share some of those phrases here today.
In my teens
When I was in my teens and had too much energy, I'd lay in bed at night, unable to fall asleep, so I'd follow this pattern of thoughts:
Zen, Makyo, and The Matrix
I've probably written about makyo before, but after reading part of The Three Pillars of Zen by Roshi Philip Kapleau last night, I thought I'd share some quotes from that book this morning.
The first quote describes makyo:
"Makyo are the phenomena -- visions, hallucinations, fantasies, revelations, illusory sensations -- which one practicing zazen is apt to experience at a particular stage in his sitting."
And then:
"the number of makyo which can appear are in fact unlimited ..."
Let the lucid dreams begin
As I prepare for another surgery this coming Friday, I've been spending more time meditating and listening to TMI recordings, and early last night I had my first lucid dream in several months. The dream was so lucid, in fact, that during the dream I said to myself, "I don't need to check to see if I'm awake, of course I'm awake", lol. Okay, maybe I'm a little rusty.
Most importantly for me, the feeling was great, and it's wonderful to know that I can still do this when I try.
I'll just keep meditating, thank you
It took about two weeks, but this morning was the first morning of meditation where I didn't feel like stopping. The timer went off and I thought, hmm, not just yet, thank you.
Every other morning until now has been "monkey mind" and "Can't wait until this is over so I can have some coffee", so this was a welcome change.
Trying to stay on the path, and being tested
Sigh ... there are times I really feel like I'm being tested.
I finally got my head straightened out a little bit lately, practicing a little Yoga and meditating daily again, feeling like it's time to be a good little monk, and then this afternoon while I'm sitting in a coffee shop a pretty young woman kept looking over at me. I could be wrong, it may have been one of those, "He's got a booger in his nose" looks, but I'm pretty sure it was one of those, "It's okay if you come over here and talk to me" looks.
Meditating in the ER
Unfortunately I ended up in the ER today. I'll skip what I was doing there for now, because I'd just like to focus on two emotions I experienced there today.
Just be
"Just be."
That's one of my favorite phrases. I especially like it when I'm about to sit down to a meditation session. What does it mean? Just be. Don't add anything to your existence. Just be. Breathe. Listen. See. Feel.
It's like a cooking recipe, but a very simple and pure one. Just exist, don't add anything to it.
Was that a thought? Shhh ...
You need to trust your environment while meditating
A thought occurred to me last night as I was meditating, and it's very simple: You have to be able to trust your environment when you're meditating, or you won't be able to get into a deep meditative state.
Hard to talk after meditating
I was just reminded that sometimes after meditating, I find it hard to talk to people. I can generally understand what they're saying, but my problem is two-fold. First, I have to work to formulate a sentence, and second, I have to get my mouth to work properly.
I don't know if this is a common occurrence among people that meditate, but as I just ran into this again, I wanted to mention it here.
