Meditation Mindfulness and Tools for Inner Peace

A big title, covering a wide area, for our simple Learn to Meditate course. Just as it should be.

Meditation is mindfulness, and it is also a tool for inner peace.

There are myriad approaches to meditation, almost as many as there are people who like to do it!

Catherine and I have sampled a good few of these, and have settled on our respective paths- IRest and Recollective Awareness, two different but complimentary ways to practice. We chose them, or they chose us, simply because we love them so much! They serve us so well.

I had circled through many forms of meditation over the years, with varying degrees of satisfaction and frustration, until I fell into the arms of Recollective Awareness, my new home, with relief and joy. There is a freedom and openness – no rules! about this method that are both relaxing- at last, relax in meditation- and  powerfully life enhancing. Being with the mind, with the thoughts just as they are, getting to know the way our mind works, brings about real changes in the every day.

We can choose a time to sit (or lie down) with the intention to meditate, then whatever happens during that time is meditation. We have a chance to journal about our experience, to expand our awareness  of it, and then to report with a teacher, to deepen our understanding.

During the years of other practices, I do not know where I picked up  some of the rules that attached themselves. Such as not moving the legs, not scratching the nose, rubbing the eye. Those rules are strict in Zen meditation but I did not last long with that. Much appealed  but after a little while it was just too uncomfortable. The ubiquitous zafu  cushion never gave me a comfortable seat, no matter how hard I tried to wiggle the insides of it. And staring with half closed eyes at the wooden wall was tiresome. The more so when there was a window above it with a lovely view.  So, farewell to Zen, although I continue to enjoy Zen writing and wisdom more than any other.

I went from the black robed monk and hard cushion and blank wall to the orange and yellow silk robes of a guru, to a soft cushion and blanket, to Sanskrit chanting and a little swaying. Comfort. We were told to look for, wait for the Blue Pearl. Loads of people saw it. But not me. Ever. That elusive Blue Pearl. That Blue Pearl which brought glimpses of enlightenment. There was often some bliss, in the chanting and meditation to the sound of the tamboura, but no enlightenment. There was much love and excellent learning and wisdom and  self inquiry which has always been my favourite practice, and plenty of gratitude. But no enlightenment.

My life changed when my husband died. I no longer felt the need of the anchor of that guru, sweet as she is. So I floated for a while, til, haphazardly, accidentally, someone mentioned Jason Siff and Recollective Awareness. His retreat was in Alice Springs, one of my spiritual homes, and so, why not?

That was it! The very first sit, no rules, no instructions, no uncomfortable Zafu, no tamboura, just be with the mind, look at the thoughts, just the  way they are.  A whole new world opened up, the world of my own mind. With fascination and curiosity and  gentleness, I began to explore and make friends with that dear mind. We were always told to ignore it, quieten it, suppress it, tie it down. Not now. Let it be.

What  rich  new experiences lay ahead, and what changes in my life! Patience. Equanimity. Qualities I had struggled with, worked on,  tried to practice,  wrestled with so hard, suddenly they were present. Hardly noticing at first- oh, how amazing that I picked that seam so effortlessly, unwound that knotted string . Not like me at all. Patience. Unbelievable. Still unbelievable, after many years.  And it is with joy that the practice continues and my life unfolds in ever expanding ways.