Several of my friends said they had no experience of the 10-hour a day meditation I described and could not imagine that kind of concentration. I suggested that they did have experiences that relate to it. Any time anyone is so focused on something or some task where they are oblivious to their feelings, thoughts or body sensations and totally focused on what needs to be done then they have the experience of this kind of meditation.
The message from the experience is that our minds are powerful and not always our friend….When the mind is not focused it only wants to crave pleasant and avoid unpleasant activities. There is a difference between cognitive and sensory focus. Cognitive is our mind dealing with the past or future; Sensory is what we actually sense here and now. Change, by the way, only happens here and now.
My take away from the continued experience of meditation is that regardless of discomforts, upsets, fears, chaos or challenges life presents I can still access the grateful, all powerful joy, right now, that being alive provides.
Rudyard Kipling many years ago wrote of this in his poem “If”:
“….if you can force your heart, nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says “Hold on”…..
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it………”
Dr. Jim
