The One I Am Seeking

I’ve been going deeper in my meditative practice lately. For the most part when I would go into meditation I was simply trying to quiet my inner chatter. I wanted all of my anxieties and worries to fall away and feel more whole, more enlightened; like all the answers to every burning question magically came to me. That was my approach for pretty much all of my years of meditating (which have been a lot of years). For so long I thought meditation was designed to help me be quiet. Be still. Sitting on my cushion, or in my chair I could close my eyes and immediately reach nirvana. I could instantly detach myself from this physical world and sit on a high mountain top (in my mind), float out of my meditation, take this feeling of elevation and remain on the mountain for the rest of my life. That was my goal. And I didn’t care if my elevated, mountain mystique meant that I felt cold or distant to those around me cause in my mind, I had reached nirvana.

It took me a long time to realize just how detrimental that goal was. And it was hard to not judge myself when I would come out of meditation and suddenly feel the weight of all the things that I was trying to avoid before I sat down and closed my eyes. The feelings of lack, unworthiness, doubt and fear all came rushing back as if they were waiting for me to open my eyes so that we could get back to running our business. (*side note* That was a Wiz reference for anyone who caught that) What is the point of meditation if not to avoid pain? Yeah that was a thought I had. Clearly I was not going into meditation for the reasons that were for my highest and greatest good. Over the years I have worked with many different spiritual teachers, each with their own approach and idea of what meditation was for them. They never imposed their ideas on me but I absorbed their ideas as my own rather than taking the time to understand what my meditative practice could be for ME.

There were moments when I was able to touch what seemed intangible. Even if it was just for a momentary flash, I felt peace. I would go on chasing that feeling day in and day out for years. Sitting on my cushion, sitting on the grass, lying down on my bed, perched up in a tress, I did whatever I thought would help me feel that peace again. Wanting to stretch each moment for a second longer so that I could feel a whole thirty seconds of stillness. Then I would get so frustrated when I couldn’t silence the inner chatter in my mind and started to believe that there was something wrong with me. How could so many other people silence their minds and make it look so easy? What are they doing right that I’m doing wrong?

Last week I found myself in a tiny local bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina. Don’t worry I’ll get back to the meditation part, but I gotta set the stage. I looked the bookstore up online earlier in the day and found some books that they were carrying that seemed appealing to me. These were books that I either never heard of or were relatively rare. To further digress I must state how much I love books. I’ve been a book lover for a long time. I would say it started back when I was a kid and had to research topics for my school papers in the encyclopedia collection that my mother bought me. Remember those. I would get lost in research for hours and discovered that reading was an escape, a way to venture into worlds that were beyond this world. I especially love books that talk about the occult and magic, and ways to learn more about the Self. These were the types of books I found in this tiny bookstore in Asheville.

One of the books I purchased discussed alchemy, which is an old science and philosophy that essentially looks at how to change basic substances into other substances. Many people think of it in relation to metal, changing a basic metal such as lead into gold. But alchemy is so much deeper than that. It’s the transformation of matter. I had never considered alchemy as a part of my spirituality let alone my meditative practices and yet in the pages of a tiny pamphlet with no author, I was learning how to transform my mind. The exercises seemed simple enough. Close my eyes, scan my body and begin to notice that I am NOT my body but an entity or being observing myself observing my body. I know… it sounds bizarre but just hang in there with me.

Upon initial observation I believed that this practice was not going to be all that challenging because I’ve always known that I am not my body. I know that I am more than my physical appearance, the names that were given to me, the personality and characteristics that I have adopted and embodied as my own but were really someone else’s. Being the Virgo that I am I did not want to skip steps even if I thought I had mastered those steps before. I figured that I could at least try this meditative practice for a bit before moving on to the next exercise. I closed me eyes and started at my feet and then slowly moved up. I envisioned each part of my body but did not assign identity with my body. I noticed that my body was a vehicle for my Self, that the true me lived inside of and animated my body. The hard part was connecting with the Self. I realized that while I may have an understanding of myself as a being in a body, to actually embody that truth was much more challenging.

Why share this with you?

It’s taken me some time, and I know that my perspective will change, but in this moment I realized a couple of things. 1. The goal of meditation is not to get to some place of nirvana with the belief that I can be detached from the world around me. The goal is to be more connected with myself and in turn be more connected with all that is connected to me. In fact I think that actual nirvana is self-mastery, self-acceptance and self-love. To be one’s true, unapologetic, unencumbered self… Wow! 2. Meditation can be whatever you want it to be for you. As I continue to go down this rabbit hole of self-discovery and self-mastery I find that there is never one road or one path that we all go to get there. And even the path that we have for ourselves will change as we change. The more I uncover and learn about this life that I am living, the more that I am able to see that the codes for my happiness, wholeness, abundance, love, acceptance are already embedded within my system, within the system of us all. When I can get out of my own way to allow space for me to remember that knowledge, I, you, we can all be our full true selves. And that feels like… nirvana.