Problems with meditation

I’m having problems with meditation, I’ve been pushing myself to carry on with little success. I’ve been taking little breaks from it with little success. Now I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong. Proprioception.

I meditate in a rather empty room, containing just my altar, my books and a shelf of tools. I meditate with a thin cotton veil over me, but it’s difficult to relax and focus with so little physical connection to the things around me. Over at How Autistic Feels, I talk about being Autistic, which comes with a variety of differences to how I sense and perceive things. One of these differences is an increased need for pressure from objects around me to remind my body where it is in relation to the rest of the world. It only makes sense that I would struggle with grounding exercises if my body isn’t receiving the grounding input it needs.

What am I going to do about it? I think I need a beanbag chair, so that I’m close to the ground but wrapped and supported in a way that provides the right feedback to my joints. I’ll be taking a break until I can find a suitable seat.

Water and Meditation

Normally I meditate in my meditation room, but I’ve been rather absorbed in online activism and a favorite game lately, and haven’t wanted to come away from the computer in time to meditate before my bath.

So I tried meditating in the bath.

This was a rather interesting experiment, once I’d got the light (and therefore the ventilation fan) turned off. I went through the usual process of attempting to center my energy so that I could ground, but I found it slippery and hard to manipulate. Where I wanted it to form a concentrated ball in my abdomen, it seemed to want to dissipate into the water.

I’d had a bit of a long day, so I gave in and let it go where it wanted to go, out of tiredness and curiosity. With a little focus, I could achieve a similar goal. I could “wash away” the prickly energies where they were sitting around my shoulders, and soak up energy from the bath without the need to try and find a way down to the Earth (we live high up) with a taproot.

It’s not something I’d choose for my everyday practice, but it was an interesting experience. It did, however, leave me feeling rather vulnerable. I was very aware that my connection to the water was in some way much less safe than a taproot into the Earth would be. I was very aware of how high up I was, that I was not grounded, despite being able to balance and renew my energy in much the same way. I was aware that it would be a trivial thing for something to get into the water, whereas a taproot felt strong, secure, and well-armoured in comparison.

I should probably read up on water in Neolithic Shamanism, but as I have a big recreational event pre-booked and looming ever closer, this probably won’t happen until after that.

Shielding

I managed to find an energy well near me. Really deep down, so it takes a while to get to it, but it’s much quicker now that I know where it is. My spirit companion was there, she seems to have taken to a badger form lately, and wanted all of the cuddles. The house wights were there, too, floating around.

So I got myself centered and grounded, started drawing energy up, and decided I’d have another little play with shielding. I’ve tried a couple of times this week with varying levels of success. I got it together and it worked! The house wights couldn’t get through, so I knew it was achieving something.

I concentrated on making the shield permeable to the house wights, who crowded in to climb on me. I think they like the energy. I can keep the shield in place with only a little effort, but I can’t keep it permeable without constant concentration.

A Bit Shaken

So as you probably know, I took a few weeks off to complete a gluten challenge. That completed, I’m now gluten-free for a period of time to see how that goes. Today, I felt well enough to try meditation again. Since it’s the first time I’ve been in the room with time and daylight to spare, I took some photos of my tools, tidied up a bit, and sat down to meditate.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting anything to happen at all. It’s been a while, I’ve moved house, I need to get back into the swing of it. First, I say hi to the wights. They seemed glad to see me, and, as usual, more interested in me than the bowl of crystallised ginger I’d set out for them. A few of them were floating, but most came to me on the floor. Unrolled, they look just like little naked hedgehogs.

I started by centering. It was weak, but I managed to get most of my spare energy in one place after chasing it round a bit. I got my taproot formed easily enough and started looking for a ‘vein’. I couldn’t find one, I pushed my taproot in every direction I could think of, and not so much as a glimmer of energy underneath me. Then I started to feel odd. Weightless, or dizzy, or falling, I’m not sure how to describe it. It was the feeling of floating in an endless space with no reference for which way is up. It was dark, but bright at the same time. And then I was acutely aware that someone or something was looking at me. Inspecting me. Something huge and terrifying. I did the only sensible thing in that moment. I asked “Are you a god?”. Like every other encounter with the otherwordly, though, it spoke in a language I couldn’t comprehend. I told it I didn’t understand, and could it show me pictures instead?

I was wrapped in something, I felt the reassuring pressure all around me. There was a pulse, right in front of my eyes. It was warm, and I felt the same weightlessness. “A womb?” I tried. That seemed right, because I got a glimpse of something outside of where I was. “I have to get out?”. A tunnel, smaller than me. “I have to *crawl* out”. I crawled, and it became a vivid sensation of birth: warm, wet, sticky, having a membrane pulled from my face and gasping for breath. Then I was standing. I looked down, but I was me. Wearing white linen robes, but me. “Rebirth?” That seemed like the right answer. “Then what?” I looked down a path. “Keep following the path.”

The whole time there was this commentary running in another bit of my mind. My writing voice chattering away about what was going on. I got a strong feeling whatever I encountered wanted me to write about this. So now I’m left with a couple of keywords, weak knees, and a sense of utter terror. Something big is out there and it took a couple of minutes out of its busy schedule to try to communicate with me.

So I suppose I’ve been reborn, or something, remade, altered in order to go on walking a new section of the path. I’ve no idea what I encountered, what it wants from me or why, so I guess I’ll just carry on and keep walking the path in front of me.

Taking some time off

Sorry to say, I won’t be writing here for a little while.

I’m awaiting diagnoses for celiac disease, which means I have to eat plenty of wheat so that they can diagnose me. This causes fuzzy brain, lack of focus and a host of other problems which affect my ability to practice. So I’ll be taking a bit of time off from writing, just until I’m formally diagnosed and can stop eating whatever it is that’s affecting my focus.

Hopefully I’ll be back soon

FoxTears

House Move Complete!

We’ve completed our house move, hooray! I now have a room just for practicing in, with no electronics (except for a light bulb) and no distractions. I’m slowly working towards having all of my books and tools in there, but as nearly everything is still in boxes in what will be the art room, it’s taking a little while.

I’ve said goodbye to the house wights in my old home. I regret not having had the time to throw a goodbye party for them, with nice offerings. I had to make do with letting them know that I would be leaving, and saying a quick goodbye on the day. I would have left an offering, but food would have gone off and been thrown out, and money would likely have been removed. It occurs that there should be a set of conventions to govern practicing in rented/shared accommodation.

I’ve also said hello to the new house wights. They’re very different from the ones I’ve known previously. These are flighted, large, round and practically weightless when in flight. They have no wings that I can see, and seem to levitate like airships. They’re lightly fuzzy, and don’t seem to have much in the way of protruding features. I’m not really getting a clear impression of colour, at the moment, but have a vague sense of a bluish-grey.

So I’ve introduced myself, stated my intent to use that room for my work, offered some corn (best to start simple, right?), and made a couple of attempts at meditation in there. I say attempts, because with the house still mostly in boxes and that lingering unsettled feeling symptomatic of not having half of the furniture I need, focusing on anything but how alien the house is is pretty difficult. I tried a little drumming, but I know I’ll need much more practice if I’m ever going to use drumming as a tool. I’ve no sense of rhythm at all.

I’ve noticed the presence of iron significantly affects my ability to focus. We had to take the metal stair rail off to get the furniture moved, and it ended up in my room. As soon as I sat down to meditate, I could feel it, like the “rubber sheet” that the used to use to explain gravitational pulls. It felt like it was pulling everything in towards it. I figured out that it was iron and moved it to another room. Now I’m just waiting for the lasting impression of it to fade.

TL;DR – I moved, and the upheaval of moving affected my ability to focus. I said goodbye to the old wights and hi to the new ones. Iron sucks, seriously, big bits of it don’t belong in my spiritual spaces.

Resolutions

This is a time of year when most people talk about their resolutions. Aspects of their lives that they want to change over the course of the year. I’m all for resolutions in general. Making a decision to change your life for the better and then acting on it is one of the most powerful things you can do to change your outcomes, and the Path I follow is all about helping people achieve their positive outcomes. So why don’t I like New Year’s Resolutions?

Well, it’s because of the timescale. You make a plan to fix something this year, starting right now, and the moment you hit the first stumbling block you think “Well, I failed again, try again next year!” and make the same resolutions (and break them) every year, over and over. This isn’t helpful. We need a shorter period of time and a smaller goal in order to be effective in keeping our resolutions for any meaningful duration. So, while I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, I do believe in daily, weekly and monthly resolutions. If you stray from your resolution, no worries, just pick yourself up and try again tomorrow, next week, or next month. Don’t beat yourself up about it, especially if your goal is a healthy diet. Feeling bad about making mistakes will only make it harder to make positive choices.

Now that I’ve explained why having a specific day of the year to make resolutions is silly, let me tell you about a few of my resolutions. First is Organisation.

Recently, I was reading some organisation-type blogs, and happened across an interesting concept. Organisation, it claimed, was the only resolution you needed. Once you had everything organised and running smoothly, the difficult resolutions of exercising more, eating right, staying away from harmful influences and spending more time doing enjoyable things would all fall into place. It cited some study where people were more likely to choose a healthy snack when they were standing in a clean kitchen, and more likely to choose an unhealthy snack when they were standing in a messy kitchen.

So organisation reduces stress, eventually gives us more free time to pursue the things we want to do, and can be claimed to be the ultimate life-hack in getting the most out of your time and energy.

Second is Less Stuff. I look around me right now, and I notice I have a lot of clutter getting in my way when I try to do things. I don’t have what most people would consider to be “A Lot Of Stuff”, but I do live in a very small space, just the one room, with communal access to kitchen and bathroom. I have a bit of stuff stored under various beds where I can get away with it, but not even half of the stuff someone with their own flat might have. It’s like trying to wade through treacle. It slows me down, makes me less inclined to get stuff done because I have to move things all the time. So less stuff would be great.

Third is Creativity. I want to make more things, useful things, because the above two resolutions don’t play well with the purely ornamental. I want to sell, trade and gift these things to people who have the space for them. This is quite handy, because most of my collection of stuff is craft materials. Fabric, yarn, bits and bobs that might be useful someday. It would be impossible to sell, difficult even to give away, and I’m not a fan of throwing away anything that has the potential to be something better.

So all of this boils down to: The Great Stashbuster.

So we’ve done the whys and why nots, and the what’s, how about the hows? I’ve recently been introduced to something called HabitRPG. It’s an interesting cross between a roleplaying game and a to-do list. This immediately appealed to my inner RPG geek. It’s rather like an RPG-themed sticker chart for grown-ups. You gain experience towards levels, and play-money when you complete tasks or build habits, and lose health when you repeat bad habits or don’t do tasks. You can spend your play money on items in the game, or on custom rewards. I’m a bit of a pizza addict, so I’ve set “Order Pizza” at a cost of 50 gold coins (about 2 days of doing stuff without claiming any other rewards).

You can find HabitRPG at https://habitrpg.com, who knows, it might give you the nudge you need to meet your resolutions today/this week/this month/this year.

Menstruation and Prayer

So as my time of the month has rolled round, it’s got me thinking about prayer. I’ve thought about being female, and the challenges that presents as a practitioner in a lot of faiths, and how I feel about that personally. Time for a post about femininity and religion, methinks.

So the big one that pops up in many traditions is that women are inherently unclean. This is often related to menstruation, and in some traditions even female non-practitioners are not permitted to pray, handle religious paraphernalia or enter religious spaces during their menses. In fact, in some places, they’re banned from preparing food, bathing, and are sometimes even sent to live elsewhere. With the modern invention of tampons, towels, hygienic disposal methods and the menstrual cup (possibly my favourite, because of low environmental impact), the physical aspect of this is pretty much a non-issue in the developed world. We have soap and water, and in many traditions we understand the importance of physical cleanliness and good health in constructive practice.

What really interests me is the idea of being spiritually unclean. Having experienced the mental and spiritual side-effects of my menstrual cycle, I can understand where this idea comes from. Menstruating can make us moody, quick-tempered and prone to feelings of anger, depression and resentment. These feelings, often beyond our control because of hormonal fluctuations, certainly present a threat to our ability to be calm, to stay anchored to the real world and to project only good. Does this mean that we’re unfit to practice? Absolutely not.

Menstruation represents an important process both physically and spiritually. It’s a process of cleansing, both of the body and spirit. We experience all of the emotions we’ve been bottling up, and we feel them more keenly than we do through the rest of the month. We renew our bodies and refresh ourselves ready for the new months, as we should with our spirits. When my hormonal fluctuations start to get me down, I picture myself as a snake shedding its skin, ridding itself of the old to allow the growth of the new. It’s like being able to make new years resolutions twelve times a year! Just like a snake shedding its skin, it can be uncomfortable, can cloud our vision and make us more prone to biting, but we come back ready for continued growth.

So what should we do? Should we remove ourselves from our duties as practitioners during our menses? The answer is to trust your feelings. If you are struggling to concentrate, or to keep your patience with people, perhaps you should make your polite apologies to whatever powers you serve and take some time to allow the refreshing process to do its thing. I would avoid doing any major works, making any requests or wishes, or advising your community. Personal prayer, however, can be a great comfort when you are feeling the physical and emotional effects of such a taxing process. Talk to any powers with which you have a sufficiently close or casual relationship for it to be appropriate, you might find that they can offer comfort and companionship, or at least hang around while you eat ice cream and cry in front of Lilo and Stitch.

If you serve a Creator, they made you this way, they’ll understand that you need to heed the call of your nature from time to time.

Centering and Grounding – Progress

So I’ve been practicing centering and grounding almost every day, it’s time to share my experiences.

I guess I’ll start with the difficulties. It’s very difficult to do when I’m sleepy, hungry or distracted by physical pain. No surprises there, but I suppose that I’ll get better at ignoring distractions with practice. I’ve also noticed that consuming my trigger-foods (grains and dairy, they cause joint discomfort and a worsening of my sensory problems) makes energy work more difficult. I’d suggest working on centering and grounding when you’re well fed (but not stuffed), well rested and comfortable.

Now onto the good points. I’ve noticed that my energy body is a little different from my physical one (again, no surprises there). It changes shape quite freely, and I recall seeing it as having a smooth, white surface when I first noticed it, almost like carved marble. It was mostly human, that time.

I experience energy as different coloured lights. Normally, I visualise my energy as golden light that feels warm and energising. I tried to center while I was feeling scared, though, and experienced my scared energy as being bright pink (perhaps I’ve just been thinking about The Sims 2 too much, the ghosts of people “scared to death” are pink). I found it very difficult to gather and direct, It was a knot around my stomach where it should have been, but it kept writhing and arcing out to other bits of my body rather than going where I directed it.

I’ve been trying to manipulate my energy to allow me to wake up more easily in the mornings. Now that the mornings are cold and gloomy, I’m having real difficulty dragging myself out of bed. What I need, I decided, is the spiritual equivalent of a caffeine pill. So after centering my energy, pushing down a taproot and pulling energy up it, I tried to package a little spare energy into a pill shape. I stored it next to my right hip. I imagine I have a belt with pouches, and I can store my spiritual tools in it. Perhaps something I need to visualise more until it feels really real.

When I went to get the energy in the morning, it was gone. I suppose it unwound and dissipated. I tried again. This time, I re-read my books and went looking for a good source to draw from. I was seeking, and I imagined it like looking through the surface of the earth to pockets and rivers of golden, flowing energy underneath. As I looked, I felt a presence, like something or someone was helping me. I felt a channel of energy being moved towards me, rather than I towards it, or my roots seeking it out. I sort of watched as energy was drawn up, and a package formed. It was seed-shaped, rather than pill-shaped, almost teardrop. I heard the word in my head as if it was being explained to me gently, like one might patiently repeat to a slow child. “Seed”, over and over again. Seeds make more sense. They’re little packages filled with concentrated energy to help a plant grow. It disappeared as soon as I had received the instructions.

I’m curious about the presence. It was a kind, patient teacher who took an interest in me. I feel it was definitely feminine in nature, with a soft, sweet voice. When she had finished her lesson, I told her that there was an offering on the altar, and I felt a sense that she appreciated the offer. It was crystallised ginger, which she seemed interested in (I can’t say the same for the inhabitants of my room, who I now like to think of as “The Natives”, as they’re native to the house).