The Meditator's Dilemma

The Meditator’s Dilemma

On the other hand, I can easily visualize my grandmother’s face in fine detail at any moment. Not only that, but when I bring grandma’s face to my mind’s eye, I am filled with gratitude, an essential ingredient of the holding environment. I encourage practitioners to uncover personally meaningful images from their own wellspring of poignant memories.
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries. —Blaise Pascal
It can be quite an insight to recognize that if you settle back, experience keeps arising all on its own. After acquiring a taste for this mode of experiencing, it is also a great relief. It takes less energy. You don’t have to work so hard to organize the flow of your experience. Even thoughts keep coming if you settle back! It was groundbreaking when I began to trust that I didn’t have to rehearse the next thing I was going to say, in conversation or in the office, that the next appropriate phrase or gesture would arise spontaneously on its own if I stayed relaxed and present.
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- Note: Critical skill needed to become a good listener. A bad listener will spend most (all?) of his time rehearsing the next thing to say, rather than listening in trust that the response (if any is required) will come. Conversations become a matter of waiting for airtime.
One often hears that it is not the experience, but the relationship to the experience, that changes in meditation.