Intro

I just started meditation on a systematic basis about a month ago. I know that meditation is something that many of my yoga students struggle with, so the purpose of this blog is to chronicle some of my experiences in the hope that they may be helpful to others.

This morning, I tried something new. I decided to listen to a guided meditation. I've never done this before, and there are a whole ton of a lot of guided meditations on YouTube, so I did a sort of random pick of one that was about as long as I intended to spend in my seat--about 20 minutes. It was for awakening Kundalini energy.

Let me start by saying that I really know nothing -- at all -- about meditation from a formal standpoint. I have a lifetime of experience with prayer. Over the past month, I have sort of taken that prayer experience and made it into a more formal, timed thing, in which I generally start off with something like the Lord's Prayer, and say it to myself very slowly, focusing on each word and its meaning. And I focus on my breath. And I think about each of the people who are very important to me, and I try to visualize sending them a wave of positive energy.

After I get through this part where I am trying to direct my own mental energy, I sort of relax and try to get mentally quiet. Sometimes I see things. Some of them are overwhelming and wonderful. I see many beautiful lights and patterns of light. I see places I don't recognize (some of these are stunningly beautiful like nothing on this earth, and others are similar to things you might see somewhere on the planet, but I haven't been there).

I have enjoyed my experience overall, and I find that it does put me in a better mental place to face the day. But I also feel like there's more. So that's where the guided meditations come in. So back to this morning. The meditation starts off with imagining a ball of brilliant light that is seated at the base of your spine. No problem. I see brilliant balls of light in my meditation all the time. So, led by the speaker, I imagine that ball traveling up my spine with each breath, then exhaling it out so that it's about 5 inches in front of my face, and then inhaling it back in and imagining it traveling back down my spine. The speaker says to do this for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, he stops talking. So that part of the meditation went really well. This ball of light behaved beautifully. Up and down the spine. Kept my focus relatively easily and started to feel very calm and relaxed. I would definitely use this technique again.

Then the speaker comes back in and directs me to either look at some erotic material or use my imagination and fantasies to become aroused. Not to do anything about it, but just to get into a state of arousal. And then he talks about the power of arousal and how ancient monks used to walk around in an excited state for long periods of time.

Ok, maybe if I had known where this was going, I might have felt ok about it, but I didn't know, so I got a lot weirded out and stopped the meditation. I went back to a recording of some monks chanting that I find very peaceful, and I settled back into my normal meditation pattern of just focusing on breath. I asked God to show me what to do, as normal. Only now, being pretty relaxed from imagining the big ball of light, I started seeing things pretty quickly. My mind wandered a little, and it settled on this year's election, which has been really horrible and contentious.

There were images, an older lady in white (who I recognized as Clinton), who was sitting on something like a throne and bathed in light. I started looking for the other candidates, and they were there, but obscured in the shadows. I could not see them, even though I was looking. So I figured the lady in white is what I'm supposed to be looking at. And as I returned my attention to her, she was split in half. Mind you, this was not in any way gory or painful looking, just like if you had a wad of dough and you cut in half. The two sides of the dough would just fall apart and be separate. There was no evident pain or bleeding or anything.

But there was also a message along with the vision of splitting. She will win, but she won't last four years. She will be torn in two. And I don't know, because this is all the message that I got, but it seems like the divisiveness in the country will lead to problems that will either metaphorically or literally tear the leadership in two. But the vision wasn't bad or negative or scary. It was all white light and calm and peaceful. Kind of like it's all going to be okay. It's all God's plan. Strange things will happen, but it's all right.

And I took great comfort from that. It actually helped alleviate a lot of my anxiety about the coming election and what will happen afterward.

I have learned from this experience that I should really investigate my guided meditation scripts a bit more before just throwing one on--and also, that this visualization of the ball of brilliant light moving up and down the spine is fantastically relaxing and it is a good tool to keep my mental focus, well, focused. It did, also leave me very receptive, which is a good thing. Maybe some time when I am not caught so off-guard, I might try the sexual arousal meditation. Could make for an interesting and powerful experience--if you are prepared for it!