Sitting

By far the greatest aid in my spiritual journey has and continues to be sitting meditation. As sharp as a diamond blade, sitting meditation aids the practitioner in relating to the patterns of your own ego.

I have only been meditating seriously for about a year and a half. Before then I had dabbled in a few techniques, most notably the yoga corpse posture. While all of the methods i had tried helped me to achieve altered states of consciousness, ie. outerbody experiences, I was only ever left with disappointment as the experience faded. The spiritual materialism of, "whoa man, I just left my body..." both valuable and informative, only left me wanting more.

Soon after stumbling across Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's, The Sacred Path of the Warrior, I began practicing shamatha (peaceful/calm abiding) meditation. Still not a serious practice, peaceful abiding brought me face to face with my very loud and busy mind... I mean, VERY LOUD AND BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! mind.

But at that time, I just couldn't handle it. I began to see the often disturbingly self-centred unfolding of everything I thought I was, and this was too much. Occasionally I would try to sit and meditate, but it was only for the sake of saying that i was a "spiritual person."