Before we begin our practice I would like to share a few thoughts about meditation.
When we are not meditating we are trying to go away from ourselves. Which means you are looking or finding yourself on the outside of yourself.
You are trying to bring values into yourself by bringing achievements or identities from outside. Just think, you want to introduce yourself. How do you do it? What would you say? What is on your resume? If you really look at your resume, you will see a lot of things about outside.
But, as a meditator, with the meditation practice, you are trying to bring attention back into you. And, you are trying to connect to yourself.
If you want to have a clean and beautiful house, you have to work inside the house. Not surrounding the house. Not in the neighborhood. But rarely are people going into their house to clean their house. Sometimes they are just painting outside. That is what we do with our lives.
As a meditator. What do you do? You are trying to get into you. Once when you come into yourself you will find what other garbage you have inside your house, what are the useful things you have, or what is the best place for those useful things? Sometimes you will find things in your bedroom which belong in your kitchen. In your life sometimes you have a place for compassion. The compassion you have to have somewhere else.
Sometimes we don’t treat well, people who you are close to. You have compassion for outsiders but, not for your family or people who are close to us.
As a meditator, what do we do? We are re-organizing ourselves. Re-arranging ourselves. But, continuously. We are recognizing what is not valuable. Taking that away. And we are noticing what is really important and valuable. We are bringing those things into ourselves. That is how we are shaping yourself with meditation.
Meditation is not just being there. Or, not just seeing what is there. Meditation is about being a radical person with yourself. Being a radical person. Radical with what? Radical with your habits, with your comfort. Sometimes we have to give up our comfort. We have to give up our habits, things that you used to do.
Just think, how much we are comfortable following the habits we used to follow. But, as a meditator you will replace things by knowing what is beneficial and what is not. A meditator is a really active person. A meditator is not a quiet person or [sitting] doing nothing. A meditator is active when you need to be active and quiet when you need to be quiet.
Okay, let’s begin our practice. We will have a discussion after the meditation.
Sit with a straightened back. Since we have two new meditators I will show you how to sit down. Sit on the front edge of the round cushion. Then, place one leg on the floor like this. Bring it closer to your body. The other foot in front of the body. Then, drop it. Then your hands, just drop them in front of your body.
The meditation begins….
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Recorded on August 19, 2019 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Mankato, Minnesota.
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