Ask Lorin Roche, PH.D.
Question About Posture in Kaballah Meditation:
For the last 6 years,I have been teaching myself, through books and practice, Kabbalah meditation, and find it incredibly spiritual. I am in my 40's, have my own law practice, and meditate for 15 to 30 minutes in the morning on the days that I meditate. Sometimes I meditate with my eyes open, which I find a little difficult. But normally, I will have my eyes closed the entire time, usually visualizing the letters of God's name or a Hebrew letter that may have some meaning for me at that time (as simplified examples: aleph-oneness with God, bet-open to new ideas, etc.). This is while I am either concentrating on my breathing, chanting hebrew prayers, focusing on the Shma, word by word (if you dont know, it is probably the single most important prayer, and only six words long), while fighting off other daily thoughts. The bad news is that I am very inconsistent in the frequency of my meditation. I often meditate two-three days in a row, then not again for several days. I am aware that inconsistency is part of my difficulty in meditating, but am working to allow my daily schedule time to meditate. It is tough given my current lifestyle of work, wife, step-daughter, three children, child support payments, etc. Currently, I sit upright with my back against my chair, but occasionally find it more comfortable to lie on the couch/bed (although more prone to falling asleep). What do you recommend? Answer: I love hearing from self-taught meditators. Meditation teachers tend to be shocked, just shocked, that anyone can learn to sit in meditation without their help, but the reality is most meditators are self-taught and they often do much better than those with "official" training. This is partly because when you teach yourself to meditate, you have to rely on your own inner feedback system for guidance - you have to be self-reliant from the start, and meditation is about that. First of all, the practices you have developed sound superb. I am familiar with those techniques and find them hair-raisingly ecstatic. That being said, here are some hints for you to check out in your own experience. Your phrase, " . . . fighting off other daily thoughts," refers to a common stereotype about meditation, that you are supposed to block thoughts somehow. Consider this, however: Who are you to decide that thoughts about your daily life - your clients, your children, your loneliness and fatigue, are not sacred? Who are you to decree that mundane thoughts should not be allowed into the inner temple of your awareness? If you look back a couple of weeks in this column, you'll see I talk a bit about thoughts, and you might Meditation Made Easy, which has whole sections on how to deal with different kinds of thoughts. Say you are breathing with a prayer, and then you start thinking about when you are going to pick the kids up from school, or how are you going to afford next month's child support. What is going on here is that you are making a link between the inner delight of prayer and the outer sense of neediness. You are resting in your inner world, and something is calling your attention, something unfinished in the outer world. This something needs to be permeated with a sense of grace, so your brain switches to thinking about it just after getting a bit of relief in meditation. Everyone tends to think at this point, "I've failed," but this isn't true. You are practicing an internal yoga. Yoga means linking together, and your brain is seeking to bring the inner peace to the issues you do not feel peaceful about, time and money pressures of daily life. This is perfect, just what is needed. Just because it happens spontaneously and involuntarily does not mean that the brain is stupid. The nervous system is attempting to dissolve the artificial boundary between infinity and minutiae. You say that you are inconsistent in the frequency of your meditation, but three days on and three days off is actually a pretty consistent rhythm. It sounds like it is the children's schedule, and the needs of others, that dictates whether you have time to meditate or not. Why don't you explore meditating for just 5 minutes on the days when "there is no time," in any posture you want, lying down or sitting. And on the other days, see if you can get a good 25 minutes, with a few minutes before and after to just hang out in the quiet. As far as posture goes, let your body's needs dictate that to you. Some days you may need to lie down and snooze for a few minutes, then you can sit up refreshed. Also explore standing part of the time, then sitting. In general, though, be wary of what any meditation teacher has to say. It truly sounds like you are doing very well, and no one knows your situation better than you.