sit down, sit up, sit still

Today was my first meditation afternoon at the Shambhala Centre in Boulder. Every wednesday afternoon we have a meditation session with our special meditation teacher, its basically a 2 hour session that begins to prepare us for our 2 day sitting/meditation weekend. The meditation workshops and the eventual 2 day retreat have been on the top of my list of things to dread and fear for the past few months. With much anxious anticipation I walked down the street to the centre and meandered up the steps, not even wanting to go in. We were on the top floor, and it was a super humid day in Boulder so the air was a bit thick and although we were dressed with a minimalist approach, it was hot up there. The room was huge with a big stage adorned with statutes and candles all over it, with a smaller alter. The room was painted gold and red and there were little mats with cushions set up for each person in our group. There were a bunch of chairs in the back for people who are unable to sit on the floor for whatever reason, today I was one of those people due to some pelvis pain I have been dealing with. 


I thought we were going to walk in, sit down, be quiet for 2 hours and then leave and I was relieved when the teacher actually began to speak to us about meditation. He mumbled quite a bit, so much of it was lost in the space between him and the group, although I think that is part of his charm. He spoke to us for a while and then at the end we sat in silence for about 15 minutes. One piece of advice was to keep the eyes open and at eye level if possible, which automatically begins to correct the posture. I have to admit it was a bit odd, there we were a room full of nearly 50 adults, all sitting on the floor in silence staring into space for 15 minutes. Then the gong rang and it was time to come back to earth. The one thing I enjoyed about the meditation was the ability to let my mind roam and just notice what I was thinking about. There are few moments in my day where I sit down, stare off into space and just observe what happens, but now that I know how it works I might start trying it more and more. I started noticing what I think about, often times my seemingly random thoughts would all lead back to the same place, which seemed a bit strange to me. How can thinking about so many different items all lead back to the same place? At the end of our practice as our instructor chanted, we were instructed to dedicate any positivity that may have arose from our meditation practice to someone in our lives who needed that energy more than ourselves. I thought that was very noble, and then an idea dawned on me, 'what if everyone in the world did this practice once a week, sat for 2 hours, noticed their thoughts and then dedicated some good energy to another person in need, what would the world look like?!' 


As I was walking home I realized that we did get off a bit easy today, we got a good intro and some good tips on generating a meditation practice. I'm grateful that they didn't just throw us off the deep end and let us mentally torture ourselves right off the bat. Having said that, I feel like in a way I have faced one of my fears. However, I'm still pretty nervous about the meditation weekend, I'm hoping to make it through the 2 days, I'm not going to grill myself if I don't, but I'm hoping it doesn't come down to that.


One more thought that came from our instructor was

"This time we spend together will go by faster than you think, but there will be intense boredom. There are two types of boredom, hot and cold. Hot boredom is when you are so bored that you become agitated or frustrated, this will happen but eventually you will tire and the cool boredom will set in." 

xo