Day 8: SO HUM plus emotions – It is hard to describe this one; I went through a wide range of feelings, as instructed. The hardest part was going through other person’s suffering as it felt a bit weird to focus on that (and avoid attracting it), but it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I believe he brought that up to help people experience compassion, even though everybody has felt it before, but some have not realized its name is compassion. Maybe next time I try this meditation, I will skip this part, and just focus on the compassion itself. And tears also came when focusing on joyful experiences, but this time happy tears!
Every time a meditation takes me deep, I am reminded that there is so much to explore inside of us, and yet we dedicate so little time to ourselves, to our self-inquiry. If everybody practiced that often, they would know themselves deeper and be able to respond to life situations better, creating a better world. At least there are about 24,000 people doing this meditation challenge – that’s a start!
Day 9: The four basic needs of the heart are attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. Maybe I unconsciously learned how to tune out Davidji’s voice, because the previous sentence was all I got from what he said at the beginning. As he instructed us to close our eyes, go silent and repeat the mantra in our minds, so I did, until the mantra disappeared, or better yet, got ingrained in me finally and all of a sudden all was quiet. I started seeing an oval shape in the middle of my forehead (third eye); it was pulsating, getting bigger then smaller, bigger then smaller. And it continued this way until Davidji spoke again and gave some good advice about going on with that during our day; but since I did this meditation right before bedtime, I will try to remember that to use it during my day tomorrow.
Day 10: Digesting our World – The breathing being different and those monks chanting on the background kept my mind so quiet! It was like they were occupying my mind, so there was no room for anything else. This also held the space for me to listen to the rest of my body – and oh! It had so much to say… So much came up! For some reason, I remembered some ancient teachings I have read about a long time ago, also some old experiences came up to the surface, and surprisingly new creative ideas inundated my being to the point of being overwhelmed. If I had to put it in words, I would say there was a line formed by many parts of my body trying to tell me something. I didn’t have enough time to listen to each one of them, because the lady started talking and wrapping up the meditation. I think I will write down what I heard from myself and my Self today, and later try that meditation again to see what else is in line waiting to tell me something. What a delightful experience; it was like breaking a big barrier of communication!
Day 11: Energy of Food – How interesting to see today’s meditation theme… Food! And to hear the instructor telling me to visualize a plate of yummy vegetables right in front of me and taste them. This morning I started my fruit fast! It is a part of a seven day cleansing process and also reeducation about food to become more mindful of what/when/how much I eat and of what I choose to eat also. And here the lady is again talking about this – how funny! So, yeah! I did recollect the taste from some yummy vegetables I miss, especially today.
I thought it was also funny that the first vegetable that came to my mind, very strongly as in feeling a deep need of it was an eggplant! Really? Okay, eggplant it is. I don’t eat it very often, so maybe it is time to start getting more of it. Then, as I started thinking about nourishment delivered to my body by this food, my heart was the one who jumped to say it enjoys eggplant very much – again, really? I guess I should apologize to my heart for depleting it from that. Then, I noticed other vegetables showed up, in this order: red bell peppers, carrots, squash… And I immediately thought about my chakras and their related colors. That was kind of surprising. At this point my whole body was vibrating and I noticed it was according to the rhythm of the background music… Some thoughts would come, but when the music changed, thoughts would quiet down immediately, and awareness would grow.
This was a surprisingly interesting meditation, to which I should add, “I am hungry”!
Day 12: Daily Rituals – Another one that matched up something that is going on in my life for the past few days, after I realized that, as I added more things to my evenings, I haven’t been able to do some of the things I used to before, such as spending more time with family – including doing yoga with them or reading meditations at bedtime, for example. Well, now I am paying the price for letting that part escape from my schedule. And I had been concerned the past two days about what I could eliminate from my nightly routine to bring back that special time with my family that I had to put aside. To my surprise, that is what this meditation was about!
As I had been already thinking about a solution for the last couple of days, it was a little bit easier to come up with an activity I could delete to introduce something better instead. Then, the instructor went quiet, but my mind didn’t. Today it was chatting a lot… Until I realized my breath was again following the song. But a few seconds later, she talked again and it was the end of it.
Day 13: Laughter – Ha! Again, the meditation hit the nail on the head… Some issues came up with someone close to me and I have been affected by them more than I would expect. SO, with today’s minutes of laughter, it was like a slap on the face! And still I couldn’t laugh, as I felt pretty upset inside. Then I asked to cry to let this feeling pass, but tears would not come out either. It was like a dark cloud being on top of me, not moving away or turning into precipitation either. I tried to continue meditating, and the feeling got even bigger. When it ended, I decided to do yoga listening to it again, and I just wasn’t there… I need to dig further into this.
Day 14: I did work on the issue that needed work yesterday, and finally was able to move forward, not figuring it out completely, which I didn’t expect to, since it is a deep one – a shadow piece waiting for some light to shine on it. I might add that this shadow piece came up because of another type of work I am doing, besides this 21-day-challenge adding to self-inquiry. There was a lot of work done yesterday, the whole day navigating around it, with lots of things happening also. A tiring day, I must say. I slept heavily for ten hours!
This morning, when I accessed today’s meditation, I was happy to hear we would lift up some emotional weight from us, as there was still debris, of course. And as I got lighter and flew with other seagulls (it’s always that bird because it loves gliding close to the waves and being at the beach, like me), I felt free. We flew for a long time, sometimes following fishermen’s boats, sometimes sitting on rocks watching the waves sprinkling at us. That is a place I feel very comfortable at. Then, in the middle of it, that shadow piece I mentioned came to the surface, surprisingly fitting into that scenery – how humorous and brilliant our Higher Selves are! I kept working on that, when I heard Davidji calling us back. I wanted more time in there to investigate deeper and maybe get closer to “cleaning out the house”. Well, at least, I do feel way lighter now.
A Path of Light 