Meditation

I`ve taken to meditating twice a day (upon waking and before going to bed), in order to have definate times where I will be still and experience myself as someone other than a guy who`s always in a frenzy out of fear of what will happen when he stops. Meditation is very simple- you get yourself in a posture where your back is straight and you can stay still for twenty minutes, you close your eyes, and in your head you repeat your mantra for about twenty minutes. But how will you know when the twenty minutes are up? I fastforwarded a blank cassette table about twenty minutes in and then recorded some meditative music. I play the tape, and when the music comes on I know it`s time to come gently out of meditation. It`s very simple- which is not to say that it`s easy. Staying focused on the mantra is not always easy- the important thing is not to force it, but to gently but firmly insist on the mantra.

Recently I was meditating- my eyes were closed and I was gently repeating my mantra, over and over again. I`d been having a really bad week. Then I felt a presence. I don`t know what it was. Although my background is Christian and this was "Christian" meditation, I`ve been far from convinced that I believed any of it anymore, and I`m not sure what this presence was. This presence was reassuring, though, and I started smiling- but then I was hit by a wave of emotion, and I started crying, like when, years ago, I was really down and my mother would come to comfort me and I would start crying. The idea that someone (something?) was trying to comfort me set me off.

This also happened to me recently at a workshop. This seems to be a sort of sign. Where it leads, I don`t know. But I want to explore this area a bit more- to try and get myself centered and my life in better perspective.