Meditation Tip #2,431

The theme of Merger comes up in my meditation over and over and I want to share my thoughts about it.

When I sit down to meditate, my first instinct to do this thing called meditation. I'm going to focus on my breath, and do this and that with my thoughts, and concentrate this way and that way, and watch for this and do this with my mood, etc., etc.

And I try. I try to manage it all. I sit and become a mental traffic controller...thoughts go this way, breath goes here, distractions go there, sounds go there, feelings? This way please! Watch out for that pain in your leg! Near collision! Back to work! Whoa! Watch out! It goes on like this for about 5-15 minutes.

Then I start getting exhausted and I surrender. It's not a conscious choice, it's just something that happens. And in that moment of surrender, I realize that the whole point of what I was doing was to escape something. It was to run away from a state of confusion or disorder or boredom. And then I stop resisting, or, more accurately, resistance just stops. I merge with the mental state I was trying to avoid and just sit there, quietly. It's peaceful. The place I was trying to get to wasn't really a destination at all. It was really the place I was already at.