Later Day Two

Time management is a difficult thing and people who promote meditation, teachers and the like (however, I am NOT a teacher and just a blogger) say that it's important to have time without interruption when one can meditate.

In my home, when the children are at school, there is space and time for me to meditate; yet without disconnecting all the phones in the house, having no communication would be potentially foolish - when I am responsible for three smaller folk, there is no absolute peace from the outside world.


So my meditation happened today around mid-day and 15minutes in first my mobile started ringing and 30secs after my landline; and inevitably it was my eldest son saying his school was closing down due to the adverse weather conditions. So obviously I answered my phone thereby interrupting the flow of the meditation.
It is important to treat such interruptions with the same equanimity that resides in the meditative practice. In Vipassana, as Taught by SN Goenka, they say that one of the keys to correct practice is equanimity; neither having dislike for any gross or unpleasant sensations that may arise in meditation nor having favour for any pleasurable experiences that similarly may arise.

After  the interruption I re-started and continued for 45 minutes solidly until I had to break my meditation again due to pain from sitting in half-lotus.

Half-lotus is a position I have recently adopted having sat for the past year plus in a cross-legged fashion. Half-lotus is more supportive of the back and I'd imagine full-lotus to be even more so; yet I struggle with the half-lotus position and the pain that can ensue. It is a discipline indeed to remain equanimous with pain, and  I have found that this can bring many rewards in my life.

Some points of note in my broken mediation where a deep connection to what is and this presented itself as a bright light shining upon me from all around. At one point in my meditation I felt as if I was in the meditation hall at Dipa Dhamma in Hereford; an interesting connection that I had not noticed before.