2009.01.26 01:00 - About meditating and crises

Wol Euler was guardian and commenter, standing in for Gaya.

Wol Euler: morning tarmel
Tarmel Udimo: good evening wol
Wol Euler smiles
Tarmel Udimo: smiles
Tarmel Udimo: you are a ball of light
Wol Euler: we are like that illustration of the paired snakes chasing each other, swallowing the other's tail
Wol Euler: true, it's my radiant personality
Tarmel Udimo: the infinity sign?
Wol Euler: I was thinking rather of a ... dunno, a logo perhaps. A circle, each half of which was a snake curling around to swallow the other's tail
Wol Euler: our two timezones chasing each other around the surface of the planet
Tarmel Udimo: we are very poetic this morning/evening :-)
Wol Euler: we are! And while on that topic, let me share a marvellous blog post this morning:
Tarmel Udimo: its a nice image
Wol Euler: http://koshtra.blogspot.com/
Tarmel Udimo: lovely, I love shopping and cooking too and make a 'wicked' chicken soup:-)
Wol Euler: Dale has such a poetic soul, he's the best advertisement for buddhism that I know
Tarmel Udimo: yes
Wol Euler: he got me started in meditation actually.
Tarmel Udimo: okay - that's interesting that's the first time i have heard you talk abiut having a meditation practise
Wol Euler: well, I don't really :)
Tarmel Udimo: or being a buddhist?
Wol Euler: and I'm not really :)
Tarmel Udimo: keep going - so what are you?
Wol Euler: if anything I am more a taoist, as I (mis)understand it. I try to listen out for what feels right in the moment
Wol Euler: and do what seems appropriate
Wol Euler: it's sometimes meditation
Tarmel Udimo: understand perhaps i am like that too
Tarmel Udimo: howvere I have been experiencing a minor spiritual crisis lately
Wol Euler: you have been making vague noises about that in IM, yes. I'm sorry that I didn't push harder. Do you want to talk about it now?
Tarmel Udimo: nothing out of the ordinary for me
Wol Euler: spiritual crises?
Wol Euler: mm?
Tarmel Udimo: its the questioning mind that I need to not allow me to descend into seeing the darkness in the light
Wol Euler struggles to unpack that sentence
Tarmel Udimo: ahhh when one uses intellect to understand something that can't be understood
Tarmel Udimo: and you? having any spiritual crisises lately
Wol Euler: for certain values of "recently", yes.
Wol Euler: I was pretty down in Fall, without really being aware of it.
Wol Euler: meditation helped, and talking to people (SL and RL)
Wol Euler: it's levelled off and my discomfort is much lower
Tarmel Udimo: yes its often after we pull out of the "darker" side that we realise we've been there
Tarmel Udimo: was this your first time meditating?
Wol Euler: no, I had various stages before
Wol Euler: my therapist taught me a few things about visualization and breathing, as a way of dealing with work-related panic attacks
Wol Euler: but I didn'T really consider that "meditation"
Wol Euler: Dale got me started seriuosly.
Wol Euler: He started a group based around a now defunct blog called "100 Days", with the idea that we would meditate once a day and note what came up as comments on the blog
Wol Euler: (the idea being that it takes 100 days to establish a new habit as part of your life)
Wol Euler: unfortunately for me it takes only about 4 days for that habit to fall out again.
Tarmel Udimo: well thanks good we have years and lifetimes to get it right... :-)
Wol Euler: mmhmm :)
Tarmel Udimo: but then one wants more/expects more from oneself and hence the spiritual crisis moment
Wol Euler: yep, very true.
Wol Euler: that is one useful thing htat I did take away from the 100 Days experience: Not to punish myself for "failing" when I missed a session or couldn't get into a good mindstate, just get up and dust off and start again
Tarmel Udimo: yes one tries to remember that
Wol Euler: like a child learning to walk. How far would they get if each time they fell, they said "Damn I am so stupid. Why do I keep making such foolish mistakes"?
Wol Euler: yet we say that to ourselves constantly
Wol Euler: (for certain values of "we" and "constantly")

There followed a long discussion of personal matters unrelated to PaB.