Meditation

Meditation has been mysterious to me for a long time. Like journaling, it seems kind of awkward in the beginning - What am I supposed to write in this book? / What am I supposed to be doing sitting here with closed eyes?

I’ve been trying many kinds of meditations over the years. I started out by trying guided ones on YouTube, just typing what I felt like, for example, “energizing meditation”, “meditation for clarity”, “grounding meditation”, and then I chose the one that seemed appealing to me in that moment.

The first strong experience I had with meditation was when my cousin was guiding me in my teenage room. I was 12 or so. First, we did some grounding, imagining roots coming out of the lower body growing into the middle of the earth. Afterwards, she guided me to lift my frequency by imagining my physical body was growing. To the size of the room. To the size of the apartment. The city. The country. As big as possible. And then taking all that energy with you as you shrink bit by bit back to your normal size body. I remember my upper body started to make circular movements, and I tried to stop myself, to see if I was somehow doing it on purpose, but my body started doing it as soon as I let go of trying to stop it. I felt like the entire surface of my body was tingling. It was a really nice experience, and I felt safe and completely safe during the entire experience.

Then I’ve tried group meditations guided by a clairvoyant. She never knew what the themes of the meditations would be before the group was physically there, and then she followed her intuition toward what was beneficial for the group. I didn’t feel the “nice and strong” experience again. Often times I didn’t really see anything. It was just black, as if you just closed your eyes. But I felt a weird drum-based sound in my ear every time. I took it as a sign. I believe someone was here to say that it was okay, that I didn’t experience anything.

The “problem” was that I expected a certain outcome of my meditations. I really wanted to feel a relief, a clear message, a picture, JUST SOMETHING!

GIVE ME SOMETHING!

I stopped trying meditating. It was just annoying, cause I felt the same wall of irritation every time I tried.

As I was traveling in India, I met several people who told me about Vipassana - a 10-day silent meditation course of Buddha’s discovery of impermanence. They told me how you practice for 10 hours a day, no speaking, no contact with the outer world, no writing, reading, communication. At first, it sounded scary to me, so I didn’t apply for the course. But as time went by, I woke up one day and thought “now it’s time!”.

I did the 10-day course. That was the toughest and most rewarding 10 days of my life! The technique was unbelievably simple, so simple that your mind really couldn’t wrap around it. But that was because you weren’t supposed to really use your thinking mind in this technique. No imagining, no pictures, no words, no chanting/singing! Just observe your natural breathing (FOR THE FIRST BLOODY 3 DAYS! 30 F**** HOURS OF OBSERVING MY NATURAL BREATHING). Hahahahaha. Insane! After those 3 days, you observe sensations on your skin, from bottom to top and top to bottom, from moment to moment. I can still hear Mr. Goenka's voice in my head as I write his words. We trained this to get the physical experience of impermanence. It is not enough that your rational mind understands it, your body needs to know it. The sensation I feel right now will change. The pleasant ones, the unpleasant ones. And so will feelings, thoughts, experiences in life. He described how all suffering comes from craving (the pleasant things in life) and aversion (of unpleasant things in life). It’s so deep inside of us. But he described that the true enlightenment is when you don’t crave or avoid anything.
I will be making another post about my 10 days in detail separately.

That meditation was so so different from anything I’ve tried before. It was raw and simple!

But that meditation form taught me so much! I realized how I “craved” a certain output during my meditation. And then I realized that I craved a certain output in my everyday life. I craved a certain feeling in my relationships, a certain sensation during and after sports.

I wanted things to be different from how they are in many aspects of my life!

I learned that meditation is not about not thinking! It is about having the presence to observe how you actually feel. No matter if you are angry, annoyed, uncomfortable, sad, happy, energized, etc. It sounds simple, and it is, BUT IT IS REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT TO MASTER!

Once we felt deeply in love, passionate, happy, excited, all we want is to feel that all the time! Every day! Pleaaaaaaase! Maybe if I say please for long enough it will happen? (Joke aside). But life will be really tough and unfair sometimes. How do you master that time? Can you fully feel it even though it appears unbearable? Like it never ends. But it will.

I experienced so beautiful feelings and sensations during the meditation course. I also felt the darkest ones I ever felt. But I made it. I sat with it the best I could. And to experience that made me realize that I can actually help myself when it’s dark. I can bear it. I can feel it. Before I fully surrendered I remembered saying to myself: THEN APPEAR! SHOW YOURSELF!

And as I surrendered, the pain went into the air.

This is a way of thinking. A way of being in the world.

Today meditation to me is to feel my true feelings in a very moment. Feelings in my body, in my mind. Whatever it is I hit the pause button and realize how it truly feels to be me. Trying not to resist any feeling. Don’t get angry if I feel like I don’t want to feel that feeling. Or if you get angry. Observe it! But as I said, this is really difficult to actually do.

As I started to become better at observing and not being hard on myself, I feel closer to myself. Sounds weird. Closer to myself how? I started to understand my mind patterns, and not just “fall” into them all the time (maybe just 80% of the time now). I do things because my intuition tells me to and I just do it without questions. When I sit down and light an incense, I move the incense with my hand as I feel like. I tap on the place of the body I feel like tapping. I do the movements that I feel like I should do. I actually started saying sounds too. Normally I would be so embarrassed if I should use my voice during meditations. It is so different from how I usually did my practice.

And if you are curious and started meditating, do your own discoveries. The advice I would give myself back when I started would be:

Be gentle to yourself. You will feel inept and angry and frustrated because you think you aren’t learning or realizing anything! You will be free when you realize you don’t have to realize anything. Let go of ANY EXPECTATIONS and let in what you are actually experiencing! I wrote this note to myself to read before meditating Vipassana in my daily life:

Dear Sofie, Say goodbye to any expectations and meet yourself where you are every second the next hour. Remember to be gentle to yourself. Relax. Meditate without tension. Observe. And remember your green-yellow-red system so no forcing and pushing. You only win when you are able to hold yourself with what there is. By helping yourself, you help the world. I believe in you, you’ve got this. From Sofie

And after meditation:

No matter how you feel like the meditation went, thank you for the effort you did. It is about the effort not about what you experienced.

I hope you will be gentle to yourself, no matter if you choose to meditate or not.

Big gentle hug from me.

*** Link to Vipassana course, tab to “inspiration”***