All kinds of spiritual practices suggest a person get to know themselves in a new way. Perhaps a vision quest or learning to pray or a new role in the church one regularly attends can provide this. Many of us, however, prefer seeing ourselves as free agents on spiritual matters. We hit the woods and soak in the earth's natural bounty in appreciation or we exercise religiously pushing the body into the peripheries of endurance to feel vitality or we practice a discipline of a marshal art for mastery. Some of us sit in our living rooms and watch Netflix or sports on TV and call those alliances spiritual.
What Hafiz seems to be pointing out here is that there are limits to what a person can label as spiritual practices. There is an intimacy that must be included in spiritual practice and to achieve that, an alliance with the self must be established. There is really no easy way around the fact that being still and being with oneself and looking at one's life for a period of time is necessary medicine. We gotta go down into the mine to retrieve the jewel of a rich life. The goods are inward - not at Tiffany's.
Meditation is an often misunderstood practice and the truth is, it cannot be done wrong unless one is insincere in which case the side effect is little reward. I recall my mother training me in meditation when, exasperated with my abundant childlike energy at bedtime she instructed me. To this day I don't know how, where, or why she came up with this because she was NOT in any way a person obviously familiar with such practices. Still, she vocally guided me to focus my mind on relaxing all the parts of me beginning with my feet and working all the way up my body. By the time I reached the top of my head, my mental energy was tamed into a synchronization with my breathing. Even as a young child I recognized this as a magic power. The mind working WITH the body in a benevolent manner is a kind of meditation/medication discipline that cultivates calm and it is a good place to begin getting to know the self as a life long friend.
Thank you for listening.
Serge Quadrado Music https://pixabay.com/music/world-muslim-way-181261/
Video: My meditation practice includes a guided meditation that allows for quality time for my mind and my body to play nice together. I use these meditations from the disembodied, ascended masters, Djehuty (Hermes, Thoth, etc) and Metatron provided by the channel Tom Jacobs. In these meditations it is stressed that a person get grounded and become very familiar with maintaining a direct energy flow with the earth and from that space, cultivate a kind of spiritual hygiene of their energetic field. I'm a word person. Some people are not going to like words in their meditations. Some prefer sounds or music. Some people prefer walking around rather than sitting quiet. Still there is a need for having a personal, uninterrupted space to navigate and hold congress with the self in a meditation.
The meditations, if done properly, have the effect similar to a 20 minute power nap. There is a sense of focus and rest when it is over. The difference is consciousness. It is a lucid napping of a sort. Here is an example of the twenty-two, 20 minute meditations provided by Tom Jacobs for the health and well being of all of us humans desiring to live with soul intention.
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.
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