Yank the mental parking brake, will ya?
This past week saw my first, honest attempt at prayer. Well, to call it a "prayer session" would be too ambitious. But at least I tried. And, of course, it was a flop.
Not that my expectations were set that high. My intentions for this session was to simply introduce myself to whomever was listening and call it a night. I didn't think that was too much to expect of myself on the first session. At the time, that is.
But was I ever surprised at just how difficult it was. I do not have (yet) a permanent altar, so I cleared off the living room coffee table (which sits at chest height when I sit on the floor). I wanted to keep things very, very simple and uncluttered, so I used only an altar cloth, a candle, my favorite chunk of raw amethyst, and my cougar shield. I prepared some chamomile tea to sooth my jangled nerves, lit the candle, and sat down.
And then stuff just kept going wrong.
First, I had forgotten to shut off the IM on my PC in the other room, so I could hear people logging in and out. Fixed that by turning off the speakers. Then, I noticed how hot it was in the apartment. Even with the windows open, it was nearing 80 degrees. The curse of living on the third floor, I suppose. And the AC is super loud and would definitely have distracted me. I could feel my clothing distracting me as well. I took off my shirt. That did not help. Then stripped down to the undies. That didn't help either. What the heck, let's go completely skyclad. I smirked and made note to myself that I hadn't ever pictured myself doing ritual completely in the buff. Well, here I was. And it didn't feel awkward at all.
Finally, I'm ready to begin. OK, where to start? Hmm, I hadn't really thought this one out to that level of detail. I knew I was way too tense and my mind was racing, so the first task was to clear my thoughts. I have meditated a few times before, with no progress made, but I wanted to give it another shot. I started with trying to picture myself in the woods, with eyes closed. It was a sunny day, calm, and completely devoid of human sounds. I could hear the birds, the rusting of the wind in the leaves, and some water running. So far, so good.
But trying to hold that image long enough for me to start relaxing was impossible. The scenery jumped around erratically, like changing the channel every few seconds. I was in a different forest, or in a meadow, or in the city. At other times, the same scene was fast-forwarded, as if I was bored with what I was watching, and was skipping to the interesting bits. I even changed perspective: now my vision was at knee-height, as if I was on all fours, running at incredible speed through the forest.
Every few seconds I would have to open my eyes and try to "reset" the scene. It was incredibly frustrating. I wondered if it would be easier with eyes open...I thought that, once my eyes closed, my mind just went haywire. I decided to use my candle flame as the focal point. The room was totally dark, except for the flame. But I could not even look at it without difficulty. The flame was incredibly bright, and hurt my eyes when I looked at it. I tried again with the eyes closed, only to get even more frustrated.
I even switched to just trying to visualize a single simple shape. I formed a white circle on a back background. Got that easily, but then circles started multiplying as if they were cells dividing. Then they started moving all over the place. Again, it was hard to keep the scene under control. It just went where it pleased.
I laid back onto the bean bag chair and sighed. "This is not working," I said aloud. I had thought about just quitting this whole spiritual journey altogether, but forced myself to just take some time and think about what all had happened. It was far too soon to give up, after only one night.
The thing that frustrated me the most is that I could not even create the most basic mental environment. If I am having trouble just relaxing and keeping my mind from running wildly away with itself, then I cannot even begin concerning myself with higher functions. Like communing with the Other.
I am treating this, not so much as a failure, but as a lesson. The lesson being that I must take very small baby steps in this very early stage of my development. I am somewhat of an impatient person. And I will bite off far more than I can chew, thinking that I can handle it. I need to take things very slowly here.
Maybe this all fits very nicely into my feline self-concept. Some of my friends have remarked that I tend to jerk my head when I hear a noise somewhere, and am easily alerted when something catches the corner of my eye. I can be on alert all the time. Should I fight this? Try to calm my mind down to the point where it can be directed? Or should I take a different approach, and just let the mind go where it will? That is, after all, very catty.
Not that my expectations were set that high. My intentions for this session was to simply introduce myself to whomever was listening and call it a night. I didn't think that was too much to expect of myself on the first session. At the time, that is.
But was I ever surprised at just how difficult it was. I do not have (yet) a permanent altar, so I cleared off the living room coffee table (which sits at chest height when I sit on the floor). I wanted to keep things very, very simple and uncluttered, so I used only an altar cloth, a candle, my favorite chunk of raw amethyst, and my cougar shield. I prepared some chamomile tea to sooth my jangled nerves, lit the candle, and sat down.
And then stuff just kept going wrong.
First, I had forgotten to shut off the IM on my PC in the other room, so I could hear people logging in and out. Fixed that by turning off the speakers. Then, I noticed how hot it was in the apartment. Even with the windows open, it was nearing 80 degrees. The curse of living on the third floor, I suppose. And the AC is super loud and would definitely have distracted me. I could feel my clothing distracting me as well. I took off my shirt. That did not help. Then stripped down to the undies. That didn't help either. What the heck, let's go completely skyclad. I smirked and made note to myself that I hadn't ever pictured myself doing ritual completely in the buff. Well, here I was. And it didn't feel awkward at all.
Finally, I'm ready to begin. OK, where to start? Hmm, I hadn't really thought this one out to that level of detail. I knew I was way too tense and my mind was racing, so the first task was to clear my thoughts. I have meditated a few times before, with no progress made, but I wanted to give it another shot. I started with trying to picture myself in the woods, with eyes closed. It was a sunny day, calm, and completely devoid of human sounds. I could hear the birds, the rusting of the wind in the leaves, and some water running. So far, so good.
But trying to hold that image long enough for me to start relaxing was impossible. The scenery jumped around erratically, like changing the channel every few seconds. I was in a different forest, or in a meadow, or in the city. At other times, the same scene was fast-forwarded, as if I was bored with what I was watching, and was skipping to the interesting bits. I even changed perspective: now my vision was at knee-height, as if I was on all fours, running at incredible speed through the forest.
Every few seconds I would have to open my eyes and try to "reset" the scene. It was incredibly frustrating. I wondered if it would be easier with eyes open...I thought that, once my eyes closed, my mind just went haywire. I decided to use my candle flame as the focal point. The room was totally dark, except for the flame. But I could not even look at it without difficulty. The flame was incredibly bright, and hurt my eyes when I looked at it. I tried again with the eyes closed, only to get even more frustrated.
I even switched to just trying to visualize a single simple shape. I formed a white circle on a back background. Got that easily, but then circles started multiplying as if they were cells dividing. Then they started moving all over the place. Again, it was hard to keep the scene under control. It just went where it pleased.
I laid back onto the bean bag chair and sighed. "This is not working," I said aloud. I had thought about just quitting this whole spiritual journey altogether, but forced myself to just take some time and think about what all had happened. It was far too soon to give up, after only one night.
The thing that frustrated me the most is that I could not even create the most basic mental environment. If I am having trouble just relaxing and keeping my mind from running wildly away with itself, then I cannot even begin concerning myself with higher functions. Like communing with the Other.
I am treating this, not so much as a failure, but as a lesson. The lesson being that I must take very small baby steps in this very early stage of my development. I am somewhat of an impatient person. And I will bite off far more than I can chew, thinking that I can handle it. I need to take things very slowly here.
Maybe this all fits very nicely into my feline self-concept. Some of my friends have remarked that I tend to jerk my head when I hear a noise somewhere, and am easily alerted when something catches the corner of my eye. I can be on alert all the time. Should I fight this? Try to calm my mind down to the point where it can be directed? Or should I take a different approach, and just let the mind go where it will? That is, after all, very catty.