Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Meditation is Fucking Hard

It's true. Meditation is a difficult thing to do. The ego continually wants to define it, label it, write a little story about how we do it/get to it. That is part of what makes it hard. The ego. So we sit. And sit. And sit some more because we feel better when we do. It energizes, relieves stress, calms, allows us to learn how to let go, allows us to make friends with ourselves (yes, even the parts of us that are assholes), allows us to learn about ourselves, allows us to feel pain.

Feeling pain is important, regardless of whether that pain is physical or mental or emotional. It allows us to heal. If we ignore the pain, does it really go away? Do we eventually just go numb? Does that really allow us to get past whatever caused the pain in the first place? My argument is that ignoring pain will not allow us to heal it. This is why meditation is so fucking hard. Sometimes it makes us feel pain. We, as humans, tend to avoid pain whenever possible. Many people that I have talked to tell me that they are afraid of this aspect of meditation (granted, usually they don't come right out and say, "I'm afraid to meditate because I'm afraid of what might come up"). Those emotions are there to serve you. Releasing them will only allow you to grow (growth is scary, I know).

I ran across this today a few hours after I started writing this post. It seemed like an interesting coincidence to me.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/10/5-obstacles-in-meditation----seth-segall/

Peace and love,
Rich

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