We can’t accomplish much in a five minute meditation. We need to allow more time–a half an hour, forty minutes. It takes time for our bodies to relax deeply enough that we can start to make contact with our own vital energy, the place from which any enduring change is going to happen.
There are physiological changes that happen when we meditate. They’re inevitable. They’re also temporary–the temporary effect of our vital energy. There are also emotional changes that happen, and they’re also effects.
Enduring change happens in our vital force. It happens when we make contact with that vital force, when we literally and quite palpably make contact. When we bring our vital energy to a state of quiet, that facilitates a shift, and allow for the release of any and all patterns of constraint and the emergence of a creative flow. This flow is an enduring change that manifests itself in our physical bodies, in our mind and emotions, and throughout the whole field of our life. It manifests as intellectual acuity, an expanded range of emotional expression, and greater physical vitality and mobility.
CC Photo courtesy of zimpenfish on Flickr
It takes time for us to know ourselves. There is no point in pushing it. There is a point to being disciplined and focused and persevering, but all of this must be done with patience. Otherwise the pressure we are putting on ourselves and our environment only perpetuates the pathologies that we are hoping to relieve ourselves of through our efforts. Our ambition, our drive, our impatience undermine the healing we aspire to in our physical bodies and in our hearts and minds.
Work is necessary, but work done in a pressurized environment for the sake of some imaginary goal or some temporary power will never bring us to a place where we are in contact with the abundance that is our own vital essence.