Meditating on ones emotional life
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
For some time I have been experimenting with a technique described by Eckhart Tolle, which he calls “feeling presence in the inner body”. This is about feeling inside the body, starting with the hands, and seeing if you can feel a sense of aliveness in them.
Despite some early successes, I kept getting distracted by powerful tingling feelings especially in the feet. For a long time I was lost in exploring the tingling, and went through many energetic encounters and defeats. Then yesterday I had a new idea, to focus on emotional feeling instead. I directed my attention at my emotional state during my meditation and explored happiness, kindness, bliss, a little despair, a little egoic reaction, and had the best sleep I had in months.
It’s a question of how you search for “feeling”, if you search for a physical sensation attention is divisive. It splits and splits. If you search for emotional content, you unify and strengthen. Or so it felt to me. Worth experimenting with.
Comments
I had some really good meditations this morning. I got up really early, about 2 am, and just relaxed watching the breath.
I think what was different this time was I was able to just stay with the physical body and the sensation of the breath in my nostrils, I didn’t get distracted too much and found a good rythm, not too deep, not too fast.
One Zen students appreciation of a Tibetan's sutra on meditation...
We should experience everything totally, never withdrawing into ourselves as a Marmot hides in its hole. Such a practice releases tremendous energy which is usually constricted by the process of maintaining fixed reference points.
Referentially is the process by which we retreat from the direct experience of everyday life.