An Insightful Meditation

I had a pleasant meditation yesterday evening, and I found myself contemplating purpose as I left the temple.

While in a meditative state, thoughts come in all different shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re verbal fragments, entire visual scenes, or something indescribable. I can tell how noisy my mind is within the first minute of a meditation, and in the hour that I sat cross legged yesterday, I noticed the noise was different than how it used to be.

The noise used to be more explicit and tangible on the days that it was loudest. I would try to focus on my breathing or a specific thought, and I’d find myself considering an interaction at work that day or a conversation that I wanted to have with a friend. I would reel myself back in to focus and eventually find myself straying again. It was easy to let these types of thoughts go - I would release them from the protective sphere I was incased in, visualizing them being ejected like something being released into the vacuum of space, one tangible thought at a time.

Recently the noise has been more abstract and near the back of my mind. When I say the “back of my mind”, I mean physically near the back of my head in the 3-dimensional space of my mind.. How wonderful is it that this last sentence gave me insight and changed the course of this journal entry? I was about to write that I didn’t understand why it was happening - that I felt like I was retreating in progress, but now I see that I’m likely witnessing subconscious activity - something explained by Shinzen Young. When I focus my thoughts on something intentional, maybe my breath or intentionally sending love to the world, I’m not pulled away because of the noise, but I’ve been noticing it’s there. Wow. It’s fleeting and gone any time that I look directly at it - like the foam leftover by a retreating tide, there but mostly made of empty space.

I left the temple feeling like I have a purpose. I’ve defined my own as cultivating passion for the human experience, but yesterday it felt like the universe wanted something additional from me. I feel like I’m breaking through another glass ceiling. I got home and my partner said to me, “you look really good right now, calm and happy. You’re glowing.” I wonder what happened yesterday.