meditate for awareness (rather than medicate for obliviousness)

I’m losing momentum on this goal. I’m so fickle. Once I wear the “new” off an idea, it just doesn’t seem so attractive anymore. I’m still meditating in the mornings, but not for as long. And I don’t do it at night any more.

There’s a summer meditation group here on campus. I don’t know why I’m so freaked out by the idea of going to it. There’s a part of me that would really like to go. But it’s really pretty intimidating. I don’t know why. It has something to do with (prepare yourself for a stupid idea) the fact that I’m in the College of Ag and that’s kind of just, well, not done among my colleagues. Meditating, I mean. It’s a bit too “whoo-hoo” and “sensitive” and “in-touch with your feelings” and maybe even a little bit of a threat to the good ol’ CathoProtestant zeigeist that pervades the College of Ag in particular on campus.

I started doing this several years ago and really liked it, but after I moved here…

So since (what I’ve come to describe as) my Existential Crisis began about 3 weeks ago, I turned back to this and it’s been even more meaningful than it was when I was going through all the hell of my separation from my husband. Recently I started meditating in the mornings for just 10 or 15 minutes and again at night. I’ve also been reading the tao te ching and the Bhagavad Gita (both translations from Stephen Mitchell, who is FABULOUS)and that has been very insightful as well. Especially the tao te ching. I read both of these in part or in whole in the past, but whether it’s that I’m more ready for it now, or because the Stephen Mitchell translations are so much more readable than any other version I’ve ever encountered, I’m getting so much more out of it now. I’d like to start meditating a little longer every morning and evening, if I could carve out a little more time for it. Seems like a good idea.