Experiment Update: My Life Without Meditation

If you read posts from a while ago, you know that I have been an avid practitioner of yoga and meditation since the 70's.  Recently I have taken a hiatus from regular practice, as an experiment and due to a bout of laziness.  Lately this has meant 1. yoga practice - only when teaching, and 2. meditation once every other week or so.  In addition I have taken on a mildly stressful 1/2 time job unrelated to these pursuits.  The stress is self imposed by my Virgo need for doing things well and right and the inability to control the situation to provide me with the resources needed to do things efficiently, and my childish need to be right.  It does infiltrate my non working hours and even my meditations.  I am also eating less alive food, less variety and occasional coffee binges, and much more sugar.

The result is:  more stress, less joyfulness, less relaxed feeling, pain in my body - aka less fun.  In meditation, my mind is filled with thought, I rarely get to that spacious place where there is no thought, whereas I used to be able to do that at anytime in the past.  However, in present times of meditation, I am content even with this active mind as it is.  In life, I am more reactive, less able to pull myself out of the "shenpa" or hook of life.  I still maintain a stillness in perspective of being the non-doer of any of this, this has not changed.  I can still step back and be the observer of my life experiences.  The awareness of Self/observer/that which is beyond the experience has been maintained.  ( don't really know how to describe This, which is beyond words)

2nd result: this body hurts every morning when it wakes up

Latest Conclusion:   The practice of yoga and meditation truly change how my brain is wired and functions. For one, as has been reported in studies on Tibetan monks, I believe meditation strengthened the cingulate that allows "space" around all situations, giving time to consider, and not react.  No reaction was necessary with a constant state of mind that allowed all things to be as they are.

  I have experienced the rewiring of my brain over 30 years of practice.  I have also experience the initial stages of rewiring of the brain in the opposite direction in the past three years of less to no practice.

2nd conclusion:  I do not prefer this new/old state of being so much that I am returning to practice.

Actions Considered:  Daily meditation, more home practice of yoga, eating better, less sugar, no coffee - ah the old days

Namaste
Lisa

Well, I have been running an experiment.  I always run them on myself.  I did yoga daily for 25 years, (except when I was having kids - my body did not cooperate). And in the first 2000 decade I started meditating everyday.  Although I didnt live in a cave and devote all of my time to sacred scripture reading, practicing yamas and niyamas, but rather lived a life with kids, relationships and much material success, I found my consciousness quite expansive, my awareness very present, mindfulness always there.  The sense of ego was diminishing and I experienced life as if the "I" was just part of the "one".  As I surrendered more and more to what was, my ego (sense of individual self) had less and less to do with what manifested in my life, and yet life manifested quite a lot.

At some point a decision was made to not continue so strong a practice, perhaps mind won a small battle, and I lessened the meditation practice and lessened the yoga practice.  I even stopped the practice altogether for many months.  Although there was still the sense of less I and more one, the change in awareness and expansive consciousness had been quite extreme.  In other words,
No Meditation = No Awareness.  Over time the state of presence and mindfulness decreased more and more.

All of that led me to consider that this really is a function of neurons in the brain, .and not some potential spiritually induced enlightenment.  The more I practice(meditation/yoga), the more the neurons in my brain become wired in a spacious, unreactive, surrender leaning way.  The less I practice, the more stressed I react and less open and spacious I feel.

It take 7 years to replace all the neurons in our brains.  In this 2nd phase of the experiment I hope to locate the happy medium range of awareness and functioning on this plane(t).