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Writer's pictureRosalba Randal

PIECES OF MY MEDITATION PRACTICE


I started my meditation journey inmy late twenties. Being a very sporty, and active person, I found --without planning-, something that matched my physical nature and spiritual longings.

I found this by chance: Through a casual encounter with a friend, he invited me in a rush to this talk about “energy and energy management”. As my country was going through an energetic crisis because lack of rain the year before, I though the talk was about this.


To my amaze and joy, the talk was about the manage of the different energy centres in the body (chakras), and also how to be healthy, the energetic body needs to be in alignment with the emotional and the physical body. They talked about the work/teachings of characters such as Gurdief, Ounspensky, Osho -all new for me by then.


From that very fist talk, I knew I was ready for this information. Not only ready, I was hungry, thirsty… in deep need of this new opening. After this talk, a meditation group started, based mainly on Osho’s teachings and with the guidance of a homeopath and martial arts teacher who, to my view at that time, was enlightened. He was not, he was just a spiritual seeker wanting to share what he was seeking and finding.

From this time, I completely engaged and committed myself to a very intense physical work required to participate in the cathartic meditations that are the core of Osho’s teachings.


There is a lot of polemic -and not polemic-information about Osho. One of the things I know is that he was someone who realised that the silent-still-sitting meditation, traditionally practised in the East was not suitable for Western people's minds and lifestyle. Although Western meditators could sit in stillness, the meditator’s main aim is to still the mind. With the intention to help the mind to be silent and still, Osho designed and adequate some meditation techniques and modalities for western meditators. He was convinced that through conscious cathartic practices, the meditator would go to body stillness and silent mind.


I practised Osho’s cathartic and not cathartic meditations for few years. I was hooked with the brilliance of this possibility of allowing physical expression of emotions such as anger, frustration, shame, joy. Through this practice I acknowledged, faced, embodied my feelings with not judgement, and this practice leaves an open door to let them go.When they appeared again, I would experience them in a more accepting and healing way. The cathartic meditation is a tool to embodiment of the feelings instead of suppressing them.


For me, the ignition for my meditation practice was the cathartic meditations and although my dance sometimes is very cathartic, my dairy meditation is usually sitting, still and in silence.


For 15 years, I have practised five rhythms and dance movement as a meditative practice. This, with yoga are at the core of my spiritual practice. From my particular experience, training my body through dance and yoga have given me the endurance to SIT STILL, and cathartic meditation has given my mind the skill of acknowledging and accepting the thoughts, emotions and feelings that arise in the practising. From this place, I have experienced short glimpses of full presence


Few of the things that I learnt from meditation:


1. The fact that the body can be still does not guarantee mind stillness.

2. The body is stronger than we make of it

3. The mind is more stubborn that we think

4. Itching happens a lot when sitting, scratching can wait.

5. Observing and embracing emotions does not mean identifying with them.

6. After observing, and embracing emotions, the door is open to them go, if we are ready.

7. Meditation is a training the more you do the easier and more enjoyable it becomes.

8. There is ALWAYS something going on outside.

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