Yesterday, it occurred to me that meditation is going into the darkness and resistance to meditation is fear of the dark.
I'm doing a 40 day meditation, and as I went through it yesterday, I (truth be told) opened my eyes to peek at my timer to see how much time was left. In this case, I have to keep up for 11 minutes, which, as many of you know can feel like a long time. But my iPhone had gone dark. During some meditations, I can swipe it to check. But the meditation I'm practicing now has an arm position and hand movement that I'm committed to maintaining for all 11 minutes which makes it impossible to swipe. So I realized that even when I open my eyes to cheat and peek, I can be met with darkness. No way to know if I had 8 minutes left or 6 or 3. I wanted to know. The position is uncomfortable and I wanted to some assurance that time was passing and it would be over. But that was not to be. Nothing to do but close my eyes and get okay with the mystery.
My daughter used to be afraid of the dark and I used to tell her, "Your room is the same with the lights off as it is with the lights on." Of course, this wasn't helpful. It wasn't helpful because her fear was about the feeling that something mysterious will emerge under the cover of darkness.
This is really what resistance to meditation is about. What will emerge when I get quiet and close my eyes, when I don't have the TV or the Internet or my responsibilities to distract me from myself? What will the darkness lure into expression?
Now the beauty of Kundalini Yoga is that we have a lot of meditations that give you mantras and mudras and movements to focus on so you're not just thrown into the big wide darkness of the mind with its monsters. But it's still meditation and there's still darkness -- not knowing how much time, not knowing what you'll confront in the mind.
And yet, if we don't meet our monsters, they stay powerful and we continue to feel that we need to leave the lights on. We continue to feel that we can't be with ourselves and our thoughts, so we keep the input coming (entertainment, food, news, information) and we don't slow down.
So my message to myself and my students is to stay on the path of meditation and allow for darkness and mystery. Keep our eyes closed. Let the thoughts move through us. The time will pass; we can handle whatever "monsters" arise; and the benefits will amaze us!
I'm doing a 40 day meditation, and as I went through it yesterday, I (truth be told) opened my eyes to peek at my timer to see how much time was left. In this case, I have to keep up for 11 minutes, which, as many of you know can feel like a long time. But my iPhone had gone dark. During some meditations, I can swipe it to check. But the meditation I'm practicing now has an arm position and hand movement that I'm committed to maintaining for all 11 minutes which makes it impossible to swipe. So I realized that even when I open my eyes to cheat and peek, I can be met with darkness. No way to know if I had 8 minutes left or 6 or 3. I wanted to know. The position is uncomfortable and I wanted to some assurance that time was passing and it would be over. But that was not to be. Nothing to do but close my eyes and get okay with the mystery.
My daughter used to be afraid of the dark and I used to tell her, "Your room is the same with the lights off as it is with the lights on." Of course, this wasn't helpful. It wasn't helpful because her fear was about the feeling that something mysterious will emerge under the cover of darkness.
This is really what resistance to meditation is about. What will emerge when I get quiet and close my eyes, when I don't have the TV or the Internet or my responsibilities to distract me from myself? What will the darkness lure into expression?
Now the beauty of Kundalini Yoga is that we have a lot of meditations that give you mantras and mudras and movements to focus on so you're not just thrown into the big wide darkness of the mind with its monsters. But it's still meditation and there's still darkness -- not knowing how much time, not knowing what you'll confront in the mind.
And yet, if we don't meet our monsters, they stay powerful and we continue to feel that we need to leave the lights on. We continue to feel that we can't be with ourselves and our thoughts, so we keep the input coming (entertainment, food, news, information) and we don't slow down.
So my message to myself and my students is to stay on the path of meditation and allow for darkness and mystery. Keep our eyes closed. Let the thoughts move through us. The time will pass; we can handle whatever "monsters" arise; and the benefits will amaze us!