Annaliese · December 1, 2021 at 6:42 pm

I enjoyed sitting in this meditation with the music and your voice Marijke. I noticed my mind wandering quite a bit. I have several sore/painful places in my body and my attention kept going to them. It relieving to sit with them simply as sensations without thinking of them as problem areas or injuries. Just letting them be there, living their life as sensations, giving them names like “throbbing” and “weight”. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out what the feeling was in a certain spot, or what exactly was drawing my attention there. It was as if when I looked at it, it became invisible to me. I could tell that there was something there, calling my attention, but I couldn’t quite see what it was.

This meditation is similar to the practice I have been doing each night when I wake with sensations in the body. I notice how quickly my thoughts want to tell a story about what is wrong – in my body, in me, in my life. I have been continually going back into the body, as Eckhart Tolle said was possible to do. He is right, it can be very unpleasant! It feels somehow, like something is very wrong, something (whatever it is) shouldn’t be happening, that its dangerous to go there and give it my attention. And yet when I do consciously go there, I notice that there is no monster – it is simply a sensation. Often that sensation changes rather quickly, though it’s ok if it doesn’t. When I meet it I find that it’s ok to be there with it. It’s like a wild animal that doesn’t attack, it just sits there, being itself, doing whatever it does. It actually is not concerned with me at all. I can watch it living its own life.
This is a fun discovery, as I love watching wildlife. My husband and I have taken our children to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons (national parks in the U.S.) twice in recent years. We have watched wolves, grizzly bears, bison, moose, elk, coyote, and many other animals simply living their life, unconcerned by our watching. We have seen them play, charge each other, eat, rest, and run down mountainsides with a force that is terrifying and awesome. I love thinking of my inner landscape as wild and wonderous as these places we have visited.