The Elixir of Each Breath

One reason why it is important to be centered in your ego, in your natural self, and in your body when you meditate is so that your needs can be met. So that meditation can be a healing place, that tunes you up for life.

If you are on the path of intimacy (as opposed to being a monk or nun), then sexuality is a major part of your life and your dharma, your way through the world. Even if you are not having sex on a regular basis, welcoming the tingle of electricity through your body is important for your physical and emotional health.

Anger is also important, to notice and care for any feelings of anger anywhere in your body.

Hurt is important, to notice, tend to, soothe, any areas that are feeling hurt.

Exhaustion is important to notice, feel your way into any nerves, muscles, areas of the body that are feeling the strain, feeling tired out, in need of soothing and replenishing.

Boundary invasions, that weird rage feeling when someone crosses your boundaries, invades your space, is an important area of life to attend to, study, learn from, develop responses to.

Basically you want to feel every area of your body and its needs for healing and for expression.

This is where the magic happens.

Let's say you are using breath as your gateway into meditative awareness.

If you can simultaneously delight in the gorgeous generosity of the air, this magic substance that day and night gives us life, while at the same time feeling your desperate need for love, attention, healing, friendship, and safety, then your body will manufacture its own healing chemistry as you breathe.

This is, by the way, what life does. It generates a creative response to every challenge, every need.

Air is magic. This is not scientifically proven yet, but I also think that when we breathe aware of our needs, that we magnetically attract from the prana in air the exact kind of healing magnetism we need. There are some kind of charged particles of life in the air that respond to our need. All the meditation traditions consider this ocean of air we are living in to be generous beyond comprehension.

Most of us are borderline exhausted, like marathon runners, just doing our best ever day to get everything done.

Therefore when you approach meditation, come as your needy, exhausted, joyous, horny, lonely, irritated, angry, hurting self. That way you allow the generosity of life to treat you, heal you, soothe and refresh you.

* Ego is simply the sense of "I." The sense of who you are. What you capabilities and limitations are. What your desires are and the nature of your Path.

** When people try to be perfect in meditation and do not cherish their imperfection, and do not stay in their ego needs, then meditation can be dessicating. They might benefit for 6 months to a year, but then the denial of needs becomes a permanent part of the way energy flows in the body. There are many skilled observers in the world, and among them meditators are famous for becoming robotic and dissociated.

How Meditation Can Make You Stronger

When you challenge your body to work, you get fatigued, and then the body rebuilds itself and you come back stronger. Athletes and bodybuilders work this action/rest cycle constantly: it’s called training, and it’s how muscles grow. When you challenge your muscles, the body rebuilds them stronger than before. That is what “working out” is. Lifting weights, exercising, working the body, breaks the tissue down. There are micro-tears. At night, and on your rest days, the body rebuilds the muscles. It can take two days to recover from an intense workout. You may feel sore the next day, and really sore two days later.

I remember being surprised when I learned it is rest that makes you stronger. I’d always assumed it was the workouts that built you up. The trainers say it’s actually rest plus having sufficient nutrition circulating in the body to provide the raw materials for the repairs. The play of opposites is that you want to challenge the body and break it down, just the right amount, and then rest those body parts through sleep and normal use for a couple of days. That’s what makes you stronger.

Working out week after week without sufficient rest time can result in overtraining injuries, which means the body does not have enough time to repair the injuries before you stress it again. This is a known phenomenon in all form of athletic training, and coaches and exercise physiologists have done brilliant work in revealing these rhythms. Athletes who follow their training rhythms get better results with fewer disabling injuries.

In daily life, we do many kinds of workouts, on emotional, social, and informational levels. We challenge ourselves to cope with environments at home and at work, and we can get worn out on many levels. Our rest time is when we heal up and become stronger. I think we can suffer from a kind of “overtraining” fatigue on these other levels, such as emotions and information. Sometimes, we ache with fatigue, tension, or just plain pain that is not just physical. Mostly the pain goes away by itself. There are some forms of pain that stay, and we wonder what that is. This is more than just the usual pain, we find ourselves thinking.

This is where meditation comes in. Among other things, meditation can be a rest much deeper than deep sleep, which we can access in the midst of our day whenever we want. When you rest more deeply than sleep, you can heal more deeply also.

Meditation feels like time out, time off, a brief vacation in which you don’t have to do anything.

You pay attention almost idly, in the gentlest way possible, to some aspect of the body’s self-renewal process, such as breathing , the heart beating, or the relationship of your body to infinity, or any of a million other things. In meditation we enjoy whatever the focus is and rest in it. We do so little that the entire doing structure of the body can reset its circuits.

You place your attention in some aspect of how life renews life, and you rest there. Feed on it, bathe in it, explore it, delight in it, play with it. Nest there. Bond with it. That’s about it. The technique is extremely simple, but what can be elusive is finding the approach you love so much you want to do it, or that is so natural to you that you can do it under almost any circumstance.

Is Your Meditation Practice Working?

There are types of meditation that go with each stage of the life cycle – adolescence, studying, entering the work force, courtship, marriage, birth, raising children and suffering the pangs as they become independent and leave home, and so on.

There are meditations that go with each type of person, and there are tens of thousands of important distinctions. And beyond that, no one is a "generic person."

Each of us has unique qualities, ways we don't fit the mold, and these need to be converted from what feels like a curse, to a gift.

The meditation traditions of the world have preserved many thousands of different techniques. The knowledge that is lacking is which technique goes with which type of person.

When you find the technique that suits you, you'll feel that it supports your life as it is now and it nourishes the person you are wanting to become. The meditation will be an affirmation of your being.

Doing someone else's meditation is like trying to live someone else's life. It might be entertaining for awhile, even educational at the same time that it is weakening you. Some day you will want to get back to rediscovering who you are. If you feel that a meditation practice is in any way undermining of who you are, make careful note, for the effect may be like taking a medicine you don't need.

Meditation in the past has been used to obliterate individuality. This is because sometimes a person has to do whatever it takes to fit into the ashram, monastery, lamasery to which they have been assigned. What is it to be a monk? You give up your name, your identity, your family, your clothes, your money, your desires, and your individuality.

Monasteries the world over use certain types of meditation to break the egos of recruits and make them compliant, submissive members of the religious order. But if you are not in a monastery and you do monastic-type meditation, you may just become weak-willed, submissive and easily manipulated.

When you approach meditation, do only that which strengthens you.

This is not mystical - you can sense it in your daily life.

Instinctive Meditation is an approach to learning and practicing meditation that focuses on your individuality, so that you thrive in daily life and do not become dependent on gurus and external authorities.

In Meditation You Are Allowed to Have Moods

Meditation is a love relationship between your body and infinity, and it’s sensual. As with any healthy love relationship, you are allowed to have moods. The more honest you are, the better.

“Saying how you feel” in meditation just means you admit to yourself, you don’t think you have to be perfect in order to meditate.

You can come in and say, “I’m afraid. I’m scared.”

“I’m grumpy.”

“I’m lonely, hold me.”

“I am angry!”

“I am suspicious of you.”

“I don’t trust you.”

Saying how you feel opens the door and lets love in. You are basically just admitting to yourself how you feel. This counteracts the tendency many of us have to feel ashamed of how cluttered our minds are.

You can even say to your inner love, “I’m sorry, my mind is so cluttered with my to-do lists right now.” Then let the life force take care of you. The genius of life is continually repairing you, revitalizing and renewing you so that you are more capable for your day.