2009.01.26 01:00 - About meditating and crises

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    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.


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