An answer the the question "How do I experience meditation?"

I was asked the other day during a coaching session "How do I experience meditation?" I thought this was actually a very good question to ask a meditation coach, it seems a very obvious one, but I don't think I have ever been asked it before so directly, which seems quite remarkable considering the amount of time that I have been a meditation teacher!
Anyway, the answer that I initially gave was something to the effect that when I meditate these days the meditation tends to ''do itself" in the sense that it now has its own natural momentum, and I just have to follow it. Some of what I experience is directly related to techniques that I have been practicing for a long time, but other aspects of my meditation experience are direct and spontaneous, where the technique has been left behind and given rise to an experience that ''is itself'' not taught but discovered.

So, later that day after my own regular sitting meditation practice I sat down and wrote another response in my journal that came to me and seemed like it was worth recording. This response is what I want to share with you below, as I think it may provide some interesting insights into the subjective experience of someone who has been meditating consistently for many years. If you compare it to the formal meditation technique on the "Level 2 microcosmic orbit meditation" that I recently placed on the Qi Gong blog, you will see certain common points. If you compare and contrast the two you can start to see how a formal technique evolves into a deeper, more free-form/fluid and participatory experience.

So, here is my answer to "How do I experience meditation" as I sat down and wrote it in my journal. Please remember I have done it in a subjective, poetic and creative manner, rather than a scientific or technical one. As many of you know I am a practicing artist, and this response is a reflection of this part of who I am. It is one answer of potentially many that I could have made:
"Imagine that beneath the surface of where you live there is a big lake of Earth light, or Earth Soul, a huge pool of liquid golden light lying within the body of the planet. Imagine then that when you meditate this light is catalyzed, starting to rise up to the surface, flowing into your body through the soles of your feet. This fills your body with a sensation that is tangible physically and gives rise to a deep sense of connection/connectivity to the Planet and to the Whole.
So, then imagine that as you continue to meditate day by day, gradually more and more of this light starts to rise up to the surface of where you are living. It start to flow not just up into you, but also up into things like the trees and the plants in your neighborhood, even into the fabric of the buildings, paths, concrete and so forth.
The natural flow of the Earth light / Earth Soul is catalyzed so that, even if (like most places) the surface environment where you live has been tampered with, blocked and otherwise abused by human activity, the flow is revived, renewed and increased. To what extent it is renewed depends upon many factors, such as the power of the meditator, how badly the original energy flow of the place has been blocked, what ongoing activities there are around about and so on.
Then imagine that the increased flow of energy up from the Earth and land below into the trees, the living things, and the natural and artificial structures in the landscape around you has another effect. Imagine that it starts to attract and catalyze an increased flow of Star light and energy down from the sky above which flows down through the body of you the meditator, and the bodies of the things on the surface of the land around you.
It seems almost like the Earth light and the Stars above start to communicate and interact, and everything on the surface world in the middle, including you and your body experience a participation in this energy exchange and dialogue.
In this experience, speaking from the subjective view of the meditator, there is sometimes a lot of dynamic energy and movement through the body, and sometimes deep stillness. Most often it is a balance of the two that is ebbing and flowing in an organic and protean way.
Within the context of this description, the meaning of being human seems to be revealed as a mediator of energies between Heaven and Earth, a potential catalyzer of the evolutionary process of the Planetary being of which we are a part. To be human in this way feels deeply wonderful and meaningful.
For me meditation seems to contain much in the nature of communion, a sense of contact, a sense of finding that which takes away any sense of isolation, and replaces it with a deep, centering experience of belonging.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do nor\t reproduce without permission.