Hello Again Everyone,
The past few blogs as you can see have been kind of autobiographical. Sharing them with you has opened my eyes to many things. It is a strange phenomena indeed blogging. Some friends of mine are always encouraging me to share my experiences with them and when I do I am met with blank stares or questions like tinged with great trepidation, ‘Can you do that [drink champagne], can you joke around like that [ another horrendous guys walks into a bar joke] etc but with many readers all of which i dont know I find some weird acceptance, or maybe its release from carrying some things for so long. We really dont walk alone in this life, and it is always surprising who is walking with you.
I wanted to talk or share with you my experiences in meditation. The first thing I must say is that there are different kinds of meditation. By this I dont mean the different meditations styles or exercises. For example, there is a meditation group that meets at a community center and they offer free classes that really do a great service of getting one aware of the joy that one can find in silence when the IPODs, tv, cell fones are off.
There is another meditation, in a general most obtuse sense, a mystical meditation. I will use here a specific definition of meditation used by Raymund Andrea in his the Mystic Way, which is that meditation is a special form of contemplation where the practicition focuses exclusively on God and God alone. When we go through an initiation or we have an experience that catalyzing our outwardly making a promise to walk the path and try to surrender completely to God, like a dead person wrapped in a white cloth, ifeel meditation take on a different intensity.
I remember at first it has always been difficult for me to meditate firstly because of the sickle cell pain I get in ym knees and secondly my mind is very weird its everywhere, here and there, working ona few things at once. Its likes 20 tv all on at once.
We were taught as darvishes to accept whatever state comes to us in meditation. For some reason when I first heard this I chuckled bout audibly and interiorly. After much pain from sitting down cross legged. I finaly got to a point where I could actually sit down comfortably. Then of course all sorts of memories and ideas came up, and its useless to fight them. You cant fight fire with more fire.
What I found helped at this point was two things. Watching moms at walmart handle kids throwing tantrums. I felt this was what the mind was doing throwing a tantrum. One mom at Walmart, just put her stuff down and let the kid make a scene. He screamed and did all the hysterics then after awhile eh tired himself out and became quite docile. I am sure he got reprimanded at home, I know that look all too well. So I jsut let the mind go let all the memories and stuff come up and I watched it. However at all times i would always bring it back to a fitting emotion. I would think about a few lovely expereinces I had where I felt I had a real connection to somehtign greater than myself.
To give you an example. I was on a bus going on a highway, day dreaming and gazing out the window, when all of a sudden I saw a little bird perhaps a sparrow land on this thick sort of grass. The wind happened to be blowing at the time and there in a second that lasted what seemed to be an eternity, bird wind tree observer were all swaying together. It was a touch of wonderment and love, that was other wordly. This experience took on more meaning when I read this words.
The longing you feel for
this loves comes from inside you.
When you become the Friend, your
longing will be as the man in
the ocean who holds to a piece of
wood. Eventually, wood, man, and
oceans become one swaying being,
shams Tabriz, the secret of God.
Of course a day came where I would start to feel first briefly drowned in sorrow and would be crying sometimes uncontrollably. Other day would come where I was waashed over but waves of joy, and I felt like getting up and dancing, of course to some internal music. Then that went away completely, for the longest time I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. It felt like the Presence left me.
this occured in the 3 months of my going to the Khaniqah before I was initiated. Then the real fun began. Once or twice I would be sitting with my eyes open but I would have just come too. Like I didnt know where I was for a moment. Then that went away, and my three most painful sickle cell crisis started in meditation. It wasnt because of how i was sitting, or what not. Who knows. A dull ache started once i got outside, once i got off the train at my stop a little limp, and by the time I got to bed that night it was full blown.
In my pain I would try to say my zekr and that helped for 5 minutes, along with insane amount of pain killers. My last crisis in May as you know I went to the ER. The pain was so intense, I didnt see anything I could do. I couldnt endure anymore, I could talk or pray or anything. I felt there was nothing left to do but expire. For the second time in my life I said m goodbyes interiorly and jsut waited.
Since that time meditation has become something wonderful, there is peace there. There is another me there that normally is quiet and observing that speaks. Sometimes I am really gone for a while. Other times I feel on fire like the sun.
But always no matter what the experience that comes from meditation, I find them not to be the Friend himself. I have come to in a slight way understand the words of Hallaj when he says: “Suffering is He Himself, whereas happiness comes from Him.” Even sometimes I find myself asking for more burning , and i guess that is craziness in realm of the everyday…
Here is something from the Rumi story Moses and the Shepard:
Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things. The Druvidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It’s all praise and it’s all right.
It’s not me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers.
I don’t hear the words they say.
I look inside at the humility.
That broken, open, lowliness is the reality. Not the language.
Forget phraseology. I want Burning!
Burning! Be friends with your burning.
Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression.
Moses, those who pay attention to ways of thinking and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn are another.
Don’t impose a property tax on a burned out village.
Don’t scold the lover.
The wrong way he talks is better than a hundred right ways of others.
Inside the Kabbah, it doesn’t matter which direction you point your prayer rug.
The ocean diver doesn’t need snow shoes.
The Love Religion has no code or doctrine. Only God.
So the Ruby has nothing engraved on it.
It doesn’t need markings.”
Recent Comments