Drosseling about meditation and “pirates”.

I can’t stand the imaginary nor real life “pirates” when they invade my mind! They just seems to know just when to strike when all my attention is on mind-sitting.

You may ask what mind-sitting is?  And why these imaginary or real “pirates” seems to appear when I am doing mind-sitting?

This is how I define mind-sitting;

Mind-sitting is a sitting pose, where the meaning of it is just sitting and doing nothing. Not entirly true that you are doing nothing when you are mind-sitting, cause mind-sitting is all about introspection of the body and the mind through meditation….But it is doing nothing as not doing anything that has to do with everyday life-matters, like watching tv, working, driving, reading, sleeping etc. Mind-sitting is time spent with your self, just relaxing and focusing on your self….  some say they find inner peace, body-awearness and mindfullness through meditation in mind-sitting pose after a while, and some say they actually find nihilism or nothingness and that it makes them feel content. But is it always so? Does mind-sitting guarantee mindfullness and bodyawearness if you practising it long enough? Does it guarantee you anything at all? Does it guarantee truths? Truths about what, reality, our selves, about what?  And most importantly: does it reveal only truths?

I had an experience last year that is relevant to my questions above; I sat at the restaurant (or bar) Baku in Tønsberg (in Norway). I sat there writing in my diary…I was in a poetic state of mind….you now; the kind of poetic state of mind you seem to flow into when you feel Bacchus works it’s way into your vein’sl. I was content in my own company, just ocationally looking at the handsome bartender  when I needed some inspiration. I had been drinking and writing for hours…..I wasn’t drunk or anything like that, just tipsy. After midnight, a blonde Norwegian girl came in to the bar. I don’t know for how long she was there with her boyfriend before she disturbed my writings and drinking. But when she did,  she asked:

“What are you writing? And why are you writing [here]?”

I didn’t feel comfortable enough to reveal my poetry for the night to a stranger, but I felt she was seeking some life answers by the way she look at me with eyes hungry for knowledge. I didn’t think I had the answers she was looking for, but I thought perhaps we could find some answers together (?). So I thought maybe this was one of the moments in life where beeing in the same room with a stranger who implisit asks for my company, may expose some new directions in life through conversation. So I replyed to the second question;

“I like to see the ink of my soul on a piece of paper. I like the feeling of the ink beeing an extention of my self, and it has a therapautic effect on me. It makes my soul grow to read my selves in writings. To meet the “past Drosseldaisy” by reading it with the “present Drosseldaisy” interpretation, is always like visiting a friend from the past. I really enjoy my own coffe company with the past and the present “me” no matter what state of mind I am or was in; doesn’t matter if it is in delirium, in despair, in desire, in destruction, in death, in dream, in divine , in history, in ideas….etc…In the name of Bacchus tonight, he tells trough my veins some stories and metaphor’s who my friends from the past and present was and is, and let me be me what ever it means to be me……”

…I think that was what I said according to my memory….and I actually was satisfied with my own answer there and then…and thought she was going to reveal some deep yogi or poetic innsights too after my answer….well, that didn’t happen. Instead she suddenly bursted out:

“I used to do that, before I discovered mindfullness and bodyawearness….and now I am so free from the obsession of writing! Writing is a sin to the soul! Writing is pain because I had so much fantasy, and writing manifested all the pain from my colorful fantasies! Mindfullness and bodyawearness is the answer to make all the fantasies go away, which is the source to all depressions !”

I didn’t get her….why was the writing a sin for her? Was her fantasies that terrible in colours that she had to kill it with meditation? Does meditation even kill any part of your selves? Isn’t that against ahimsa philosophy in meditation; which means to be against to kill or violate your self? She tried to explain it in the simples way to me, but still, even to day, I don’t get it. She said (based on my memories, off course):

” I wrote so much for therapautic reasons, and I wrote my fantasy universe and my whole soul in poetry and stories; and it always made me more and more depressed and didn’t have the terapautic effect I was expecting at all! Meditation free’d me from all that now! You should seek out meditation and stop writing…seek inner peace!”

Pirate! A blonde Norwegian woman pirate! Not an imaginary “pirate” who occationally strikes at me when I am doing mind-sitting, but a real breathing  “wanna be” mindfull bodyaware woman who was trying to invade like a pirate and push her trauma and dogmas on me! Why? She knew nothing of me, and most of all: she didn’t know I did some meditation in mind-sitting too,…. and that was not what I had experienced through meditations nor writing nor through drinking. On the contrary; it made me feel free to feel the ink of my soul on the paper! So how rude of her to force her truth on me …and her truth based on what? Insights she got, apperantly, from mindfullness and bodyawearness trough mind-sitting and meditation….really? And she thought her insight would save me if I stop writing and fantasying and focus even more on mind-sitting, mindfullness and bodyawareness?

After she was done bragging about how far she had come in bodyawearness and mindfullness, after she was done prejudging my writing, she tried to make me aware of my lack of wisdom about writing matters; since I was many years and hours behind her in bodyawearness and mindfullness (apperantly)….

…, I sat there and was annoyed by here existence! After she was done lecturing me for beeing imprisoned with fantasies and the need to write it , she rushed and drank more beer with her boyfriend and enjoyed the nightlife; meaning that she was embracing life now that she never wrote nor fantasied anymore, and therefore where not depressed…… Maybe she was projecting herself on me and thought I had the same issues as her ? Maybe she thought she was saving me with the story of her life?

Sometimes, when I look back to that incident in the bar, I wonder if she was still looking for inner peace and bodyawearness and mindfullness…for why else would she brag about it to a stranger that she had found it? Maybe her bragging was an attempt to to convince her self more than me that she had found “it”?  She paradoxly tried to seek out inner peace, mindfullness and bodyawearness by affirmations to a stranger. This kind of affirmations to a person, is like children when they resently have learned a new word or two: they need to taste the word(s) in their pallet many times to make it real. The more they say the new words, the more they think they understands it by making it into affirmations, for them self and others. They need a real human mirror, as a listner, to confirm that they have learned the words and understood it, and then they make affirmations of it…So…maybe that day or that week she had finally learned mindfullness and bodyawearness, and needed to make it into affirmation to a complete stranger? Or maybe not…(?)

I don’t think meditation is about getting rid of your issues, drama, dogmas or anything. The more you try to reject part of yourself (or ignore it), even through meditation, the more it will do like the pirates always does: come back for more of your time! You are enpowering the pirates the more you are trying to get rid of them! I don’t think writing nor fantasies in it selves is wrong unless you make it into pirating of your time.

Time  is like a treasure. And pirates are always after your treasure. There will always be pirates out there trying to steal my time , steal my moments or even worse: they want me to turn into a pirate, to be one of them, with their dogmas and their way of living! But the worst thing with the pirates is when you become your own worst pirate in your life…time is treasure, don’t make the pirate steal it from you!

I like to visit my memories like I visit an old friend. I do that in my drosselhours through mind-sitting. As with all friends: I have them there for a coffe-hour in my mind, and then I need to let them go so I can focus on all the flow of the things happening in the imaginarium of my Drosselland. Occationally I just say hello and then wave good bye, cause they are friends that need to remain in the past so I can move on to the present and to the future. That’s also why I write; I write to my friends, wich means my self.  And then I move on…it is important to me that all parts of my selves remains my friends and don’t becomes pirates….that’s why I work so hard for all the friends within me. Sometimes parts of me invades me like pirates, but I always does my best to make them eventually my friends.

So for me, even to this day, I can’t see the harm in writing so I later on can have a dialog with my old self (an old friend); manifested on paper. How did the blonde Norwegian girl manage to come to that conclusion through meditating:

“writing and fantasying is harming the soul and therefore a sin”

while mine conclusion through meditation is:

“writing and fantasying is like a friend that makes you grow”.

So…through the same method, meditation through mind-sitting, which should have been a guarantee for truths, we somehow came to differents truths about writing…thats interesting…

When I think about that blonde girl from the bar, I feel that she, without knowing it,  thaught me a lot about imaginary pirates and real life “pirates”. And I appriciate that lesson for my life. If I meet her again, I will ask her about the progression of her bodyawearness and mindfullness. If she answer the same as last time, I know for sure she is lying and that she have made her self into her own worst pirate…why? Well , the way I see it:

Meditation is about accepting yourself as a friend the matter what you feel. It means befriending even your darkest light and get to know it so it wont harm you anymore….and then move on…. it doesn’t mean to supress it, like she did/does with writing and her fantasies….cause then it will like in Pandoras box; then the pirate will force itself out of the box and consume you…don’t you think?

the moral for my self is:

Ahimsa….Ahimsa means; don’t violate, no violence (passifism)…and in this case;  especially don’t violate your atman/ (ego) by supressing parts of your self that you should befriend with. Aknowledge it, accept it, and move on with peace. Or else the “pirates” will violate you….Therefore; my writings nor my fantasies will never harm me as long as I relate to it as a part of my self as a friend and don’t make them into pirates that ravishing me…

Ahimsa! Even though I can’t stand the real life “pirates” nor my imaginary “pirates”, I won’t harm them….Ahimsa!.