Well, it has been an interesting process, continuing this personal sadhana with this meditation. At the start, the self-loathing and resistance that was coming up was overwhelming. I’ve found that happens anytime I quit my meditation practice for a length of time – Yogi Bhajan described this as the “meditation being hell on earth” instead of bliss experience.
Invariably, I’ve been resisting doing this meditation until just before I go to sleep. Procrastination, if you will. Somewhere along the line, I decided to commit to writing 3 journal pages a day – “morning pages” as they’re known, but I haven’t been doing them in the morning (or when I first get up). I’ve moved from a small journal to an 8-1/2″ x 11″ journal, and this made that process seem exponentially harder – and it took longer. These two things have been something of a move on my part to “giving myself the time of day,” being present with myself, instead of frittering away the hours with the wide variety of activities that seem to take me out of myself and my circumstances; movies, TV, FaceBook, emails, phone calls, etc.
I’ve been resisting the journalling even more than the meditation! A few days I just gave up and skipped them, but I’ve forced myself through the meditation. A few days of the meditation were absolutely awful; I didn’t want to be doing it, and I was completely disinterested and distracted and impatient. On a couple of days, I actually was reading Yogi Bhajan lectures while I chanted, which is probably better than not doing the meditation at all, but sure didn’t seem too rewarding. Then earlier this week, I had a couple of days where I really went deeply into the meditation and was present with it. One day I paused and brought my hands in prayer pose at my third eye, and then went back to the meditation, and it was like all my chakras opened up into alignment and there was this deep state of open-ness and acceptance of some of my circumstances. Last night, I was feeling angry and frustrated at some of my circumstances – and my unproductive reactions to them, and brought that into the meditation, chanting with an intensity I haven’t for quite some time.
Although the meditation has a physical warm-up as it’s first segment, I’ve really been feeling like doing a physical yoga set before it prepares me to reach a deeper level with it, and I feel better the next day as well – or at least I had a better day the last time I tried this.
I don’t remember exactly which day I started, so to reach 40 days I have to continue through this coming weekend. Then I’ll decide whether to switch meditations or continue with it.