Meditation: Day Three

On day three of my thirty day trek into trying meditation, and I have realized two things.

One, meditation is both difficult and easy in a complex way.  As the Davich mentions in his 8 Minute Meditation, meditation requires very little, at least in Davich’s simple way of describing meditation, work.  Specifically, one sits on the edge of a seat, closes one’s eyes, and counts one breaths.  Davich also defines meditation in a very forgiving way, that really there is no need to conduct a meta-analysis of whether or not the meditation is working or not, because the mere participation of “meditation,” one Davich insists is an action and not a thing, means that it is working. 

And yet, there is a goal to meditation.  Meditation is supposed to quiet one’s mind.  On the third day, for eight minutes I sat with my feet flat on my den carpet, my hands laying palm-side down upon my knees, my eyes closed, counting breaths as they ascended and descended through my nostrils.  But my mind, it did not find quiet.  Quite the opposite, my mind felt like a frenetic ball of energy.  I had no problem siting perfectly still.  I had no urge to move about.  Only my mind was so energetic.  I always directed myself back to my breaths, allowing everything around me to be, but it felt uncomfortable, like my mind was pushing me in all sorts of directions, like there was an inner me trying to escape out of my skull.

After 8 minutes, I felt relaxed.  I can even say that while meditating, I felt the peeling away of stress, a kind of unburdening of will, a lightness I could sense in my shoulder blades and then the top of my arms.  I noticed to tiny bits of other parts of my body slip from tension, a finger on my right hand, my left leg.  But all the while, the electricity in my head exploding thoughts made me feel frustrated. 

Two, if meditation is supposed to bring me peace outside of meditation, it did not prove to be true either yesterday evening or this morning when I could feel the stress and frustration of a bad day.  I was upset with Valerie yesterday.  And then this morning, again both frustration at myself, that sometimes I am not working hard enough, or smart enough, that I am displaced, and that all the little acts committed amount to nothing.

It is day three.  If this were a weight loss regime, the effects would not be immediate; the effects would be gradual, the slow erosion of weight, the notice that clothes that were once restricting are now snug, and perhaps soon will be loose.  But it is hard to tell when losing weight because weight fluctuates, and some days there will not be a positive loss.  I am hoping that meditation resembles this, that tomorrow will be a better day, and the next day, even better.