Why do you meditate?
Do you meditate to get high, to enjoy those peak experiences?
Do you meditate to to get enlightened?
A life of searching for meaning, and ending in a small country town in Western Australia, leading, through Advaita, to understanding and self-realization. See also my website at http://www.beyondseeking.com/
The body it still subject to the world and it's effects. Simply understanding who I am and the transformation that goes with it doesn't make the body impervious to age and infirmity. Just the other day while re-building our bathroom and after jackhammering some concrete out of the floor I stood up and this simple act caused my lower back muscles to spasm, v-e-r-y painful, as those of you who have had the same problem will know. So I had to go to a doctor, pay and take the prescribed medications to help the healing process. So now I have to let nature take it's coarse for a few days. It's clear that it's the body and not me that this has happened to though.
I've just been visited by Jim of http://www.jimdreaver.com/ ; he was visiting his brother locally and was told of me buy a mutual lady who attended one of his sessions and had previously emailed me and listened to a talk I gave in Fremantle, Western Australia. As we sat under the large oak tree on this warm, sunny Spring day in the back garden and talked I was reminded of the similarities and differences of our awakening(s). Again it showed how the experience and circumstances of enlightenment is so common to all and yet so personal and subsequently expressed so uniquely. Until today I had decided to not go on subscribing to my web site but Jim showed me that perhaps I should let it go on a bit longer so those out there who are still seeking freedom can have another angle, another perspective, another way of looking at the 'problem' - thank you Jim.
A close obseravtion of our emotional live reveals there are subtle ups & downs; quite appart from the more gross emotions we experience through out our lives. The small, clear highs ofter lasting only seconds can be easily missed. I call them blips. Not the negative 'blip' seen on the computer screen starting a nuclear war type of blip but the subtle pleasant blips - a little bubble of wonderful emotion which may be triggered by a past memory or experience or some aspect of that experience. These make life sooo pleasant and memerable - even if in the end it is know there is no-one here to experience it all, but the pure experience is quite remarkable in itself.