Just a little haiku

I found boundless joy
Hidden in my spirit deep
So I need not be

The difference between hypnosis and meditation

In hypnosis, you try and get the chattering monkeys to talk the way you want. You stand as monkey general before the monkey army and make them shout the order of the day.

In meditation, you let the monkeys chatter as much as they like. You just train yourself to not take them too seriously.

Noticing a change in my emotional reactions

Let's start with a somewhat strange story.

I have a history of intermittent meditation. I had a fling with buddhism about 10 years ago, broke away from it all, got into tantra, studied NLP, discovered that it's bullshit...

Several weeks ago, I was in a pub with a very close friend of mine. Late at night, we started challenging each other with NLP bullshit, by way of "I can talk you into a trance. See how you're getting tired and relaxed?"... That kind of stuff. We do that. We both have that background. It's fun to us.

Then I switched gears. "How about some meditation. Right now, right here, in the presence of 18year old boozers and lovely young girls?" Of course, ourselves had had a few Guinnesses and Jamesons and were fairly pissed by that time.

"Sure", he says. He couldn't step down from that challenge of course.

And we both went into a session of vipassana.

It was an odd, but strangely liberating thing. It felt good. It felt like breaking a taboo. Very empowering, that. I never thought that one could meditate on booze!

That whole ordeal sent me into a journey of rediscovering meditation, once more.

And I am seeing some changes.

As I'm *) breaking away from some automatic emotional reactions through mindfulness and some tantric breathing, I have a very weird feeling.

I look at reddit threads and other internet content and go: Huh. This would have had me all up in rage only a week ago. I would have HAD to comment on that. It would have been completely impossible to let that go.

Right now (and, fingers crossed, for a little longer! :-) ), a lot of things just don't get me upset so much. I laugh a bit more. I don't take it all as serious as I used to.

It is just that little bit easier to not get upset.

This is very, very liberating.

Don't get me wrong. I am very, very aware that this is nothing final or permanent at all, and I will have my share in a lot of useless drama still. But right now, this is utterly enjoyable.

I was at a somewhat similar place like this, back during my fling with buddhism. There's a huge difference though (mainly due to being 10 years older, I guess). This time, there is less pretension. Less need for some extraordinary experiences. Less urge to repress my thoughts (in order to appear holier to myself). I don't need all the metaphysical woo-woo just to be able to sit down and practice.

There is simply more joy now.

The main point, though, is that I now have more experience, and so I can trust my own practice better. I know what to expect, and more importantly: what NOT to. No superpowers. No transcendence. No loss of control. No weird becoming-other-than-human. I know that I can go back to normal, just by not practicing for a while.

This is good. This is very good.

I think, for the very first time in my life, I can say without cheese or irony: May all sentient beings find peace of mind!

(Also, don't worry, I still don't claim enlightenment for myself, and in most likelihood, I never will. After all, I do not believe that enlightenment actually EXISTS, remember?)


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*) slowly, temporarily, just a little bit...