Charging Through Life

This evening, in my quest to try new things and ask questions of people to see what they know, I attended a discussion on the benefits of meditation which I found on the internet. Blessid art thou Google. True to form, most of the week I've been predicting what the talk would be like and how it would go. I knew a little about the instructor from his website; a hansom and strong man with a shaved head from Australia - probably gay. "How many people at any given week are really going to be interested in learning meditation," I thought to myself. "I just stumbled upon this guy's website and he's offering lessons out of his house - no business or organization to speak of," I reasoned. So most likely it will be me and this dude in his apartment by ourselves. That's the situation I planned for, that's what I envisioned.

Walking up to the address on Laurel Ave., I was greeted by three ladies in their late 20's/early 30's. One was talking about her 2-year old son. By the time we were ushered into the apartment there had gathered more than a dozen people, mostly women who all look to have already discovered a new-age way of life by the looks of their clothes. So right off the bat I discover that I am actually not the progressive, young gay man living in L.A. who is branching out and searching for the next chapter in his life. I have, in fact, turned into a single straight woman in her late-thirty's who's going to use meditation in place of a man. So much for being able to predicting future situations.

Well what did I learn from this hour-long discussion?

There was something about conciseness and how if we are more conscious of the world around us we are better equipped to deal with things like stress and choices. And the human brain is always trying to organize and rationalize and look into the future - it's what it does. This part resinated with me. The instructor explained that our brains are always trying to get ready for what will happen; but there are so many variables in life that 'what will happen' never does. And because of all the different outcomes of what could be there is actually no real future existance, there is only right now. This was truly one of the biggest new-age hippy ideals he said all night, but somehow it makes since (and, no, I didn't reiterate it correctly here... I am SO paraphrasing, And probably incorrectly so).

Apparently there are many many types of meditation techniques, but what Will (the instructor) teaches is a very easy and sustainable form of meditation. It only requires 20-minutes in the morning and 20-minutes in the early evening. What he said, though, is that it does take discipline. Discipline to commit to doing it and integrating it into your routine and eventually your life. Now this also resinated with me. There are so many things I know I need to be doing these days: exercising, networking, looking for a new job, eating better, looking for love, exercising.... But while I have all the tools and motivation, I clearly lack discipline. Perhaps this will help. However, to contradict that last point of the things I should be doing but aren't; Will also said that it is human nature to always want more because we are never happy with what we have today (also VERY much paraphrased from the more eloquent original).

If none of the rantings in this blog entry make any since to you, your not alone - even I'm confused. See, I think this is what meditation might be good for: it might help me to stop contradicting myself and begin to make since.

But the question remains: do I believe in any of this? Well I think I had better figure that out before Monday at 7:30PM because I start a four-day class on the subject. And it's going to cost me one week's salary. Yea, the "contribution" we each are asked to make for this class is the sum we earn in one work week. Now for someone who's living paycheck-to-paycheck, this part of the class definitely jolted a dose of reality into the situation.

Plus, we are asked to bring to our first class (besides a week's salary), some sweet fruit and a hand-full of fresh flowers. You see, the fruit and flowers are a ceremonial offering from the student and must be made before the instructor will issue your mantra.

OK, so what did I learn tonight?

1. Don't make assumptions about what will happen. You just can not predict the future so stop trying
2. It only takes a few minutes a day to make a big impact on your life but that's IF you can dedicate yourself and commit to the time/effort
3. One should probably have fresh flowers on-hand just incase a situation ever arrises that you need to make a ceremonial offering