Question
Hi, I'm Ashley, an 18 year old girl from a small town in Ohio. I have only briefly experimented with meditation. To be honest, I find it very hard to concentrate or feel comfortable enough to do it anymore. But I want to change that. I want to bring a new form of enlightment into my life through meditation that I can really benefit from and not waste time on. Like everyone, I have enough stresses to last a lifetime. But I am a very senstive girl and I feel that calming down at the end of each day could help clear my worries and tension that can cause me to be very selfish sometimes. Basically all I'm asking is if you know of any type of free learning classes, books, videos or anything that can get me started on this new change in my lifestyle...please let me know. Because frankly, I dont know what kind of meditation would be good for me or anything. I havent the slightest clue where to start even. So I could really use your help. Thank you for listening, Ash...
Answer
Hi, Ashley.
I'm trying to get a grasp on what your reasons are for wanting to meditate. It sounds like you are saying that you'd like to calm down at the end of the day and that would help clear out your worries and tensions. Ok, that's clear. You are sensitive and the worries and tensions are uncomfortable, naturally. So it is helpful for your poor nervous system to let these discomforts clear away.
But then you also say that the worries and tensions make you selfish sometimes. I'm not sure what this means for you. (I can imagine some things it could mean but don't know if they are what you are talking about.) Maybe you could tell me more about this. Maybe you get mad at people when you don't really mean to because you are stressed out. It's true that it's hard to be very considerate when we're stressed out, especially if someone does something that makes the stress worse, not to mention the innocent victims of my stress!
So, if I've understood you, you'd like to find some meditation that will help clear out the stress and worries. You mentioned finding it hard to concentrate. I personally don't have any kind of concentration in my meditative time. Instead, I want to just be able to open up and feel and hear what is really going on in my body and mind right now. Have you ever tried that? Not trying to change anything, but just listening and feeling. Giving your nervous system, mind, body a chance to just express what is happening in it without judging it or changing it. Of course, it may change on its own, effortlessly. That could include actually feeling more uncomfortable for a while, since during the day we hold back a lot of the sensations that are going on, or push them out of our mind. So they build up until you let yourself feel them.
I think if you try this you might find that it is sometimes possible just to give all of this worry and tension a big, wide space of awareness to express itself in, and that this allows the body and the mind to take care of themselves, to clear out, to refresh, to learn and to integrate information from the day. All of this takes place on its own. You don't have to try to do it.
You may even discover things about how you tend to react that may change how you respond to things in your daily life, so there might not be quite so much tension and worry created. The more quiet, open time you can have, the more this can happen. So it's nice sometimes to get away to a silent retreat for several days or a week to really get a fresh view of your life. I go to the Springwater Center in western NY. You can read about it at www.springwatercenter.org.
In your daily sitting you might find that it is not so easy to have this space of being open to what is going on. You might find that you have been daydreaming or that there is just a lot of confusion or turmoil going on. This is all ok. It has its own life and comes and goes. If you do wake up from a daydream, the important thing is that you are awake now. Maybe a moment later there will be daydream again. But there is no need to fight this or react to it. It is just how you are right then. The mind may need to daydream but there may also be a natural interest to stay awake and be with what is going on.
I wouldn't worry too much about trying to achieve any state of being more balanced, less worried, more considerate or anything. If you give yourself time and space to really listen to yourself, just as you are, to get to know yourself, changes will happen by themselves. In any case, we can be quite calm one minute and the next minute be angry and defensive, so there is no need to have the idea that you should hold on to a particular state of mind. The state of mind changes on its own. We don't need to control it. Just, if possible, allow the space to listen, feel and see yourself without judging. Just listening. You may find this also allows you to hear others.
I hope this is a start for you. Please write back if I have not been too clear or if you have some other questions or if you try this and want to let me know how it goes. I think if you can keep it simple, just listening without knowing why, just being in touch with what is here in yourself and around you, not worrying about making something of yourself, you may find a meditative being that is simple and uncomplicated and allows your life to take care of itself in a simple and intelligent way at moments.
Best wishes.
Jay Cutts
