Meditation: back to basics

The fun of meditation

Yesterday, when I least expected it, I found myself at the right spot at the right time. To sketch the situation: I felt totally and utterly confused. Here I was, back in Belgium, surrounded by loving friends, in a beautiful city to walk in, but I couldn't help feeling restless and uncomfortable. My thoughts went on the run with me, and I couldn't control them going too far away (into the future, into questions, into everything that takes me down). Yes, sometimes I just want to take a rifle and gun these thoughts down like birds, one by one. A friend of mine used to call them 'unusual thoughts', good for nothing, bringing only confusion because they don't connect with reality at all. 

So there I was, yesterday evening, in a café in Antwerp, together with a good friend. No table available, except for one: a man drinking beer on his own, three chairs empty next to him. Of course we sat down on these chairs, and of course it only took a short while before the three of us started to talk. And yes, the world is small, and Antwerp is a tiny no-town if you come to think of it, because before we knew, it, the three of us had all kinds of invisible threads in the world that connected us. Most surprising was not the meeting in itself (it happens every day if you go out and search for it), but the topic of the conversation: meditation, retreat, silence and what all this can do to the human mind. 

And so I've come to a point in this blog where I admit that for a long time (let's say the past 5 years) I have been quietly longing for an inner state of silence and peace. I have already been doing my best to try and find it through several workshops, studies, creative therapies and so on, but the best experience I had was when I started meditating about three years ago. During the year that I practised it every day for at least an hour, I felt free, light, focused and down-to-earth. As if some kind of veil was taken away from before my eyes. The big puzzle of daily life with all its unexpected and sometimes unwanted impressions, sounds, lights, emotions and voices suddenly appeared not to be a confusing puzzle at all. I could breathe into it. 

Unfortunately enough, I stopped meditating. And now, even though I have a long 'holiday' and am supposed to be more 'relaxed', I feel more puzzled with each day that passes. I stopped meditating for no reason at all. At least, that is what I thought at first. But the truth lies in three words: I got scared. And from that moment during meditation (a moment of anger, anguish and terror), meditating became threatening. 

Have I never tried it again during the past year? Of course I have. For five minutes or so. As soon as I sat down on my little wooden bench, knees crossed, hands in my lap, I could feel my whole body saying 'thank you'. An enormous feeling of relief would flow from head to toe, relaxing my shoulders, neck and especially my spine. But I could hear my limbs whisper 'hurry up' to each other, as if every inch of my body knew that they would only get five minutes to breathe themselves into life again.

Five minutes. No more. That is how afraid I was to be drawn again into this state of anguish. I was, and I still am, scared to death of what I will find when I let go of my ego, of the things that I regard as 'me'.  And I will tell you why: because I couldn't put into words what I was experiencing. I wanted to have some control over what was happening in the cellar of my soul and brains, but control seemed impossible, so I stopped meditating.

And yet, just when I forget about meditation and about all the merit it gives me, when my ego takes control again and leads me further and further away from my soul because of all of the opportunities I have, and all the things I can see and must do in one year, and what a waste it would be not to do, not to go, when I feel that time will never be enough, then, exactly then, I meet a man who says: ' Retreat, let time stretch before you as an endless path. It's a gain of time, never a loss, and you will be able to breathe again into the world.'

This one sentence, given to me by mere coincidence, took me back to where I left off egowise a year ago. My goal for the new year will be: to stretch out time in front of me, as a giant mattress on which I can jump and play and be happy, even if I don't move one inch away from my little wooden bench. I don't have to travel to gather experience; I am experience. All the things I need, will come to me in the right time. In this I have faith.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

Quote from 'Ulysses', written by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)