Praising Meditation
Since Get Real I’ve been actively developing a practice of meditation. That’s over 9 months ago. (Wow. As I just wrote that last sentence, I just realized how far I’ve come and how much I’ve worked on becoming the man of my dreams, the kind of guy that, one day, will be able to give freely in all my relationships with others without any expectation and the ability to create warmth, trust, and humor).
Developing a practice of meditation has recently yielded a very powerful experience, recently. As I sat on my rooftop, I worked through the guided meditation I received while participating in Get Real. As the recording came to an end, I continued to remain aware of my body, my emotions, and the sensations of the outside world pressing against all of it. I’ve become very skilled at literally filtering emotions throughout my entire body, from my toes to the top of my head. I can literally feel an emotion like sadness and feel it where it originates (for me sadness is always just below my heart) while also expanding that sensation beyond that space to every part of my body. It’s crazy, but it really gets those otherwise lingering emotions felt, accepted, and dealt with.
But all of this is the kind of internal awareness that comes from meditation. Right now, I want to share my feelings of external awareness that come from meditation and its relationship to my own self-development, particularly my ability to source feelings of power and connection.
As I’m directing my awareness outward, with eyes closed, I literally attempt to sense my surroundings. When I do this outside, I can literally feel a sensation of expansion, of wideness. I can sense the pressure between my body and chair I sit on. I can feel through the chair and onto the floor and, because that floor is the ceiling for apartments below, I can feel the tension of the building and hollowness of the apartment below. My body becomes an extension of the chair and all it touches and all that touches what those things touch, and so on. Much like a blind man’s cane, the breeze, the ground, the sounds of the traffic below, all become extensions of my body and its awareness. I expand outward towards the stars and downward toward the earth and all the spaces, objects, things, events, and people in between. There is no judgement, that is, I do not think about what is happening, but rather I maintain a focus on the events of my awareness, the sounds, the sensations. Losing myself in them.
As you can imagine, this creates all sorts of bodily feelings and soulful emotions. Well, when I feel or sense those emotions that come from expanding my awareness outward I feel those feelings fully, just like I described above. I push those emotions throughout my body, feeling fully. And so it goes. Outward. Inward. Emotion. Sensation. Repeat.
As I do this, a strange thing happens. I feel dis-burdened. Hmm. That’s an odd word. How about this one: lighter. Hmm. I have better one. I feel “present.” An interesting thing, this “being-present.” The moment I feel this “present-ness,” I feel lighter, like a weight has been lifted. The emotion is one of freedom and power. I literally feel like I can accomplish anything. I feel fulfilled, ready to give. It’s a very amazing sensation, one that I believe I would never have been able to recognize if I had not taken so many steps to push my edge, to connect with others, to simply be the man I know I can be. And here is the point…
What I have I learned from this experience? Well, a few very powerful things.
- This feeling of “freedom” is recognizable to me only because I have actively taken steps to source that feeling in other areas of my life, primarily through pushing me edge. Meditation brings me to “presence” but the sensation and emotion that comes of that awareness is a feeling of freedom that, to be honest, I’m not sure if even two years ago I would have recognized as “freedom.” See, I have developed a “taste” for freedom. Meditating to the point of sensing “presence” yields feelings I can recognize as similar to “freedom.” For me, this brings home the importance of doing more than simply meditation as a pathway to fulfillment. Meditation helps, helps a lot, but it is not enough. I really have to work to push my edge, daily, sourcing feelings of power and connection. By doing this, when I meditate and connect with the sensations of presence I can gain maximum emotional awareness that actually helps me “tune in” deeper even when I’m not meditating. As I explain next…
- Now get this! I can carry this sensation with me. I’ve been calling it “being tuned in,” but I know on the AI forums it is sometimes refer to as “being in state.” In either case, just the other day I had one of those amazing meditations and was able to carry that with me. In short, I felt FREE. I did not NEED anything from anyone. I felt powerful. I felt connected. And, wouldn’t you know it? As I walked on the quad of the university, I was so tuned in the presence of the world that I was able to maintain eye contact with women I found attractive without thinking. In fact, it was as if I was not looking at them as objects, in a crude sense, but rather I was lost in them, in their world, how they might be feeling. As I continued to experience a girl at the bus stop, she looks and sees me seeing her. She looks away. But I was so present that for the first time in my life I sincerely wondered: “how is her day going?” She looks back at me, this time she holds eye contact a bit longer. I felt free and not at all concerned about how she might perceive me. I was simply aware of her and the emotions and sensations in my world that were ever expanding. I was present and still moving… She gives a slight smile. I smile, slightly. Our eyes locked, as I continued walking on past her.
- The biggest lesson, for me, from this meditation experience is that I was able to feel what it is like to just be in the moment. I am convinced that this sensation can be “on call” by simply attending to my world with awareness, losing myself in the sensations of my environment. As I sat at a bar, rife with people, I started to just attend to the sounds of the place, the stool I sat on, the smells… I lost myself in that moment and felt that feeling of exhilaration and freedom that I recognized from my meditation. I felt powerful and free. I just sat in that feeling. It’s a good start. Its a good start towards become much more free and available for just getting out and meeting the kinds of women I’m attracted to.
But, I notice one more thing. I lose the feeling and my “state” once I begin talking to others. It’s really odd. So, I’m out to work on maintaining that focus as I talk with others. Should be fun and should also help make my interactions less heavy and more light.