When people first start a practice like what we teach at Ziva, they’re often psyched by how deep their meditations feel.
Then as they start to get some medi experience under their belt, it feels like the sittings become more shallow.
If you’re thinking “WTF is that about?” let us explain:
When we first start meditating, the difference between our waking state and transcendence feels like white and black.
We go from being very stressed in our waking state to accessing something that feels like a total void in transcendence. It can be gratifying and we can get attached to it pretty quickly.
But accessing that state of being helps us to relax and be less stressed in our waking state. So over time the difference between waking state and meditation feels less dramatic. There’s much less black and white and many, many more shades of everything in between.
Here’s the (potentially hard) truth: The only time you ever experience 100% pure transcendence is the first time it happens. Every time after that, blending is occurring.
This is bad news if you think that being an excellent meditator is the point of meditation. This is great news if you think that the point of meditation is to get better at life.
Here is a little story we find comforting: A student went to his meditation teacher and said, “My meditation is horrible! I feel so distracted, or my legs ache, or I’m constantly falling asleep. It’s just horrible!”
“It will pass,” the teacher replied.
A week later, the student came back to his teacher. “My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive! It’s just wonderful!”
“It will pass,” the teacher replied.
Meditation doesn’t make you a different person, it makes you more yourself.