Here comes, finally, a new post in the series about meditation and climbing. When you climb on a wall inside, with the rope attached at the top of the wall, you need someone to secure you at the other end of the rope. That person is crucial – without him/her climbing would be a really dangerous activity.
In meditation, we don´t take any risk comparable to that taken when climbing. The only risk we take is that of getting in touch with restlessness, anxiousness, unpleasant thoughts. From this follows a risk that we may, at a given point, start to concentrate – start striving with the repetition of the sound. This will limit the benefits we get from our meditation.
In order to reduce the risk of meditating in a concentrated manner over a longer time period, we should regularly go to meditation guidance. The instructor to whom you discuss your meditation is like the person holding the rope when you climb on an artifical wall – he/she limits the risk you take. Through a conversation about you meditation with an instructor, you are very likely to get more insight into your meditation.
How are you actually repeating the sound? How do you react to the restlessness in your meditation? What are the parallels between the way you repeat the sound and the way you act in your life?
In climbing, regardless of how experienced and trained you are, everyone needs someone to hold the rope – even if you think you can manage without it. The same applies for meditation. Every meditator needs guidance once in a while, regardless of how long you have meditated and regardless of whether you feel there is something problematic in your meditation.
When was your last guidance? This could be a nice Christmas present to yourself.
It’s true, of course, that meditating with too much effort and concentration will reduce the immediate benefits we get from meditation. On the other hand, such mistakes are sometimes the results of right meditation, because a free mental attitude allows us to enter into parts of ourselves where we are under the sway of unconscious tendencies to tension and striving. This, in turn, makes it possible to work our way through some of these tensions. In other words, the way towards greater inner freedom passes through such errors and mistakes. And as you say, guidance will help us through these phases. Like a rope? Well, yes, I guess, I don’t really have any experience with mountain climbing.