Just a few quick thoughts:
1. Most people are not comfortable with themselves.
To a large degree I’m not comfortable with myself either. I am not happy with my anger, with my hypocrisy, my fears and prejudices, my weakness, my lack of will power, my lust, greed, laziness or any other trait you “negative” might be able to name. I don’t think I am alone in this either.
So these emotions cause a problem for anyone seeking to understand who they are, and why they react as they do to any given situation. This poses a threat to meditation. Calming your mind, listening to your own intuition, to your own mind, or at least what we think of as a ‘mind’.
When I first began meditating I was lost on a sea of thoughts that would bombard me as I would try to still my mind. I would hush my self and concentrate on not concentrating and then a conversation would come to mind, or a thought would bubble up and off I go on this wild goose chase of internal conversations and fantasy. The only thing this would accomplish is suffering.
2. Learning who you are is often misleading.
You like the way I stated that?
I know it seems like a gimmick, but it isn’t, not really. As I began to get a grasp of who I was, when no one else was around, when I was alone with my thoughts and able to hear my heart; that still wasn’t me.
That was the me I saw threw the lens of society. It colors every thought we have, or think we have. I was paying more attention to the persona I had become to the outside world than I was to who I am. In fact, I could not find me until I let go of the world and myself; then I caught a glimpse. Like seeing a shadow in the darkness, unsure if it was really there or if it was simply a trick of light in the dusk.
Close your eyes and walk around your house in the middle of the night, you will see what I mean.
I am no Bodhisattva, no Buddha, though I am… paradoxes are fun huh? But I am aware of who I am, and I accept myself. I would be a friend to Matt, sure he has problems, yeah, he can be a jerk, or a complete whiner sometimes, but I am good with that. Just as long as I move on, see the positive again and embrace it wholly.
I could get in to a lot of stuff here about the “I” being an illusion of Sams?ra and the oneness of universe here, but I will save that for another time.
Light and Love,
Matt
OK Hologram, i just read your post and I have to say I am happy. I have had many of the same thoughts and expeiences with my meditation.
I know you said you dont have any background in religion, but you have a good understanding of yourself, and that is much more important if you ask me.
Peace!