I learned a lot from a lot of trying to think about nothing...

A lot of what I learned I actually already knew, like how good meditating is for me and that I need to keep up with it regardless of whatever my life situation is, especially when it's a tough situation.  

I feel extremely grounded now and because my silence was only half-time (I still talked to my clients at work, people at the grocery store, and with people involved with graduate school admissions), I feel like I will be able to transition this into everyday life smoothly.

I would like to write a great deal more about the things that I learned during the past week, however I can't seem to put them into words & find that using more words would take away from the point.

I do want to mention a mantra I use frequently during meditation however, because it is awesome.

Very early in the week, probably my second or third time sitting I was having an extremely difficult time concentrating (as I did the times before this one), and finally I realized that I needed a mantra to help me focus.  I began asking for a mantra and searching through memories of yoga classes, the monastery, and books I've read to try and find one that I could use.  I've heard and used many mantras before, however, none came to mind and just as I was getting especially frustrated "Sat Nam" came into my head.  The funny thing is, I don't remember ever hearing this mantra before, I had no clue what it meant, but for some reason it stuck in my head.  I started repeating it, but then got a little worried about not knowing what I was saying, what if I was repeating something negative and not knowing it?  I tried to clear the mantra from my mind, but it kept popping back up.  

Later I searched the internet for the meaning of Sat Nam, and found that's actually a commonly used mantra, meaning "I am truth" or "truth is my essence," and that I was actually pronouncing it correctly in my mind.  I took this as a sign that I should use this phrase frequently in mediation and proceeded to do so.  

I've noticed some incredible things while using this mantra.  First off, it's a little bit different each time I use it, as each mediation is always a little bit (or a lot) different from the last, the mantra works the same way.  One thing that it usually does though, is it activates energy flowing up through my spine, when I inhale and think "Sat" it pulls energy up to the crown of my head, and then with the exhale "Nam" it either pours the energy down the front of my chest back into my spine, or it pours the energy all over my body with an umbrella-type effect.  There's always a rhythm to this and it often feels like ocean waves going through me and at the same time I am the ocean waves.  That sensation is incredible.  Also, sometimes it will concentrate the energy down at my root chakra, which is intense and grounding.

During one meditation I began to feel a strange itchy-burning sensation in the middle of my forehead, at my third eye.  This was fine until it started to feel like there were bugs burrowing into my head and I began to wonder if there really was something chiseling away at my forehead.  It was driving me crazy, but for some reason I didn't move and just thought to myself "well, if there is a bug digging there, at least it's right on my third eye and it'll leave a cool mark that I can tell an interesting story about" (which really doesn't match with the "non-ego" of meditation, but oh well).  Regardless, I found there were no bugs and the sensation lessened to a mild buzzing.  This buzzing/spinning sensation in my forehead has been with me on and off for about three days now & I've come to the conclusion that it's my sixth chakra opening up a bit-which is exciting & tends to happen sometimes when working profusely on the first chakra.  

Also while sitting & focusing on this mantra, sometimes I'll see flashes of dark purple behind my eyelids while my eyes are closed.  Sometimes the flashes stick around and form blobs of color that float or change shape.  One time they just kept getting bigger and bigger until I felt surrounded by them, and surrounded by a presence.  It was slightly overwhelming, so I said "hello" out loud, which was interesting.

So, enough about Sat Nam, it's awesome, and I will continue to meditate frequently.  I'm very grateful for my past week's experiences.  I also want to take this moment to recognize that I have unbelievably incredible friends.  Not very many people can call up their friends and say "hello, I'm about to go into silence, so I won't be talking to you for I don't know how long" and have their friends happily say "ok" and then support them through it.  So thank you to all my wonderful friends, I feel very loved, and below is a T-shirt for you:

Can we move on yet?

Uh, no, not really.  So, getting to the second chakra has been a lot harder than I thought it would be.  This is partly because I know I have so much to work on in the second chakra & so I've been thinking about how I would begin to examine it in a short month's time.  Of course this means I never actually starting to work on it.  The delay also has to do with the fact that I still need to work on my first chakra.  A number of things happened in the past few months that stirred up my life and made me much less grounded than I normally am.

I must admit, I think I did an excellent job working on the root chakra during the month of August, however a number of things have changed since then.  The major change is my living situation, or lack of a place to live all together.  This is a good thing however, because the energy of my past living situation turned awful.  Once your living situation gets uncomfortable  it's extremely hard to remain grounded, as that's one of the key ingredients to grounding--- your space & how comfortable you are in it.  I also found that I wasn't meditating because I couldn't stand to be in that space.  Therefore, I noticed myself becoming very ungrounded and made the change to move out-which is much much better than staying there, no matter what the future circumstances are.  The only problem is that I didn't have a place to go, yes I have a number of friends that I can stay with, however, having your own space and not having to move around a great deal is very important for grounding (unless you're on vacation of course).

A number of other things happened during this time (including not being able to find work), however everything is starting to come together now, which is lovely.  I still feel very scattered though, and find the state that I'm in now fascinating because I never would have predicted it, or imagined myself like this.  It's an excellent learning experience, and now I'm going about "fixing" everything & going back to my first chakra for the month of January- or at least the first part of the month of January, who knows how long it will be, I've learned that you can't put a time frame on these things.  (I must admit also though, that I am disappointed in myself for letting it get like this, not the circumstances I came across, but stopping the meditation and self-discovery.  I do however, realize that it's all a learning experience, which is why I'm taking these actions now.)

In order to get my grounding back and figure out what on earth is going on, I'm going to take a few moments to put some things back in order.  First off, I'll be meditating regularly twice a day, everyday (which I've already started and it is wonderful).  I'm also going to do a cleanse for my body, and go into silence (except at work) for my mind/emotions.  We'll start with that and I'll go from there...

I've discovered that I'm not bad at making huge changes to my life.  I have no problem moving out of my house without having a definite place to live, not eating solid food for 21 days, going to a Zen Monastery and not talking and meditating for hours for a month.  However, when it comes to little things, I'm a total wuss.  I find it very difficult to modify my diet slightly, make the time to meditate everyday for just 10 minutes, stop talking to someone I love for just one day, maybe even just that afternoon, etc.  So I guess one of my main goals at the moment is to try and incorporate doing "little things" (which aren't really that little, because they're much much harder to do than the big things) into my regular life.

I came to realize that I often crave going on retreats where I can be alone and figure stuff out, outside of my normal life.  There were times when I was in college when I would just drive to a hotel and stay there for the night or a weekend, just so I could have this sort of "away from everything" time.  I've been wanting to go to India a lot recently to figure things out, and yes, I really want to do this sometime soon, however I came to a realization the other day that a lot of the time recently (and other times when I'm stressed) I just want to run off to a spiritual retreat of sorts and sort things out before I come back to real life.  I get terribly jealous when I hear or read about people that are studying in Ashrams, going on journeys all over the world, and even those that are just doing a weekend solo camping trip.  For me, this retreat would be optimal to do in an Ashram where there were set times for me to eat, sleep, meditate, do yoga, and clean-that way I wouldn't have to think of this everyday life stuff then.  Yes, I'm sure I would have many awesome realizations and come to know myself better.  The time I spent at the Monastery in Vancouver was by far one of the most spiritually, emotionally, mentally & physically impactful times of my life.  It changed my life completely, mainly because I learned to meditate there and it changed my thinking.  Quite frankly I never would have been able to figure out the things I'm writing about in this blog post today if I hadn't done that.

However, the thing I realized is that I'm already here.  I don't need to go anywhere, I shouldn't go anywhere.  I need to learn to practice meditation in everyday life.  I need to be able to incorporate my spiritual practice into everyday life and not ignore my blog about my own self-discovery for 3 months.  I need to be able to make little changes and find peace in everything everyday.  That's what we meditate for anyway.  I am here right now and this is when I need to do this-not once I'm settled into a new place to live, or when I know which grad school I'm going to, or when I have a better job-right now is when I need this stuff the most.

So, yes, I'm still going to do the cleansing/meditating for long hours/silent period of time right now to start it off.  The cleansing won't be extreme, the meditating will start out more extreme than it will end up in the future, but it will be here regardless of who's house I'm staying at, the silence will not be total silence-I will still have to go to work and talk to clients as well as take care of school and apartment-hunting tasks.  So I will modify my "retreat" that I'm craving so much to fit in the space I'm in right now-I don't need to run away.  I do feel I need the short "retreat"-then I will slowly begin to start talking more, and meditating less (it will still be everyday, because I know I need that), and my cleanse will be over.  This will transition me into my new everyday "simple" habits, without me leaving my life stuff behind, even during my "retreat."

So that's the plan.