In My Meditation

Massive amounts of stress lead me to meditate last night. Wow, I just felt so AHHHHHHH! and UUUUGGGGHHHH! And felt trapped by the feelings, like they were controlling me, which I can not STAND! Being controlled by negativity is not cool. I felt a little brainwashed. This happens to me when I am under a lot of stress....my mental strength weakens and thoughts creep in that I do NOT like to listen to. Degrading thoughts about myself, worrisome thoughts about things which worrying can do nothing to improve, and a general dissatisfaction with myself that makes me feel that nothing I do is good enough. Thoughts like that just cause problems and make things harder so I got down to business to banish them.

You'll need a chicken's foot, a frog's heart, dried grass and some fairy dust. Boil a large amount of water in a cauldron and first add the fairy dust. Alright, I'll stop. But it almost sounds easier to find fairy dust then to re-program my brain through meditation. Oddly enough this mind trickery works so very well, and is not as hard as it seems after practice. The first practices are the hard part. Even now I really don't do it for that long when I do do it....just enough to calm me. I want to find that peaceful moment again.

So I pick two phrases, last night one was "I love me" and the other "I release my stress," and I close my eyes. Then when I inhale I think to myself or say aloud "I love me." And then I breath out and say or think "I release my stress." I focus on breathing and the meaning of the words and on not letting any other thoughts penetrate my consciousness. That's the challenging part. I'm always shocked at how many terrible thoughts want to barge in on me while I am doing this....thoughts like, "why are you doing this" or "this won't work" or "you can't fix stupidity" or "you really should have done more today"....the list could go on and on. And then I have to tell them to shut the hey up! In response to such nastiness from my ego or what not, I just keep breathing and say the words.... "I love me."

In these moments I allow myself to be enough, just as I am, with all the things left undone, with the feelings I've hurt, with the extra cheese I ate, with the patience I lost, with the love I haven't had the time to give. It's really so liberating. It's like a real safe place. Anyway, after doing that for awhile last night I stopped feeling so gosh darn overwhelmed and crazy and fell asleep. And I slept really well. :)