My meditation skipping over the past 1.5years!

[YogaIsLife]

Hi,
 
I am really confused and would love some feedback on this.
 
I am confused about what style of meditation to stick with. In the past 1.5 years, since finding meditation through AYP, I have been experimenting with different meditation techniques to suit my own particular make-up and am confused about which ones are best/most suitable.
 
The way I understand it each particular person has a particular temperament and system/energetic make-up and that is why there are so many "paths up the mountain". For a while in the past I had been blindingly stumbling through the middle of the wilderness, the trees, jumpring branches, sliding of wet fallen leaves, stumbling on rocks, etc. until I found that there were already threaded and cleared paths in the mountain. That is when I found AYP. My God, I thought! There are actually systematised ways to climb up this mountain!
 
I did AYP I AM meditation for 8 months. It was great. It opened me up inside a lot and re-inforced a centre in me. Very good. But somehow, after those 8 months it became not enough...I felt liek a monkey repeating a sentece. What was I learnign about myself? What was I understanding about conscioussness and the deeper levels of my awareness? But another factor was also some irritation coming up with the mantra. Maybe it stumbled upon some really nasty obstructions that could not blast through!
 
The dillemma was that by then I could not leave meditation. So I just sit every day, twice a day, but what do I do now?! I had read about breath mindfullness from Buddhism and so did that. To make things shorter I just put a list here of the different types of meditation I tried:
 
1 - AYP I AM meditation
2 - breath awareness (on the air entering/leaving the nose)
3 - "just being" meditation (akin to buddhist vipassana)
4 - tried other mantras (like "So")
5 - repeated silently a long sentence which had fundamental meaning for me (such as "I trust the Universe knows what's best for me")
6 - focused on the breathing in my abdomen (i.e. the solar plexus - felt like a minty-glowing-jewel/substance there)
7 - focused on a visualised object (a round orange/red ball)
 
Quite a curriculum for 1.5 years of practice yes? I also recently added spinal breathing and some mudras and that is helpful as well, but how do I cultivate inner silence now if I don't seem to setle for one meditationt type? I am just confused because they all seem to do so many different things!
 
From my experience - and I believe I am quite sensitive to meditation - different objects have subtle but quite distinct qualities and so a slightly different "after effect". Meditation is definitely real for me, but meditation is a state, it is not a technique. The state is real, how to get there effectively hmmm that is the question! At least for me! I envy all you people who can easily stick to one effective technique!
 
I can briefly ennumerate the pros and cons I found for each of this techniques:
 
1- like I said I feel a bit like a parrot, and repeating a word in my mind feels like using the verbal mind too much and I don't like that (feels effortfull), I really want to transcend it (the recent solar enhancenment, when I read it, I felt ah-ha, I had a feeling this was true!). I also have some aversion in working with something that I am not sure what is doing inside (although I know it is clearly explained here in AYP, thankfully);
2 - seems pretty mild. also the breath is often so variable in me and so shallow that it is very hard to follow it. Plus it is clearly connected to the mind, so if you are not thinking there is no breath! And then what?
3 - worked great. I usually returned to this one when all others were irritating. the problem here is that I am often not sure if it is doing anything (i.e. cultivating silence) or whether I am just subtly controling everything with the mind, thus not trascending it...
4 - here I saw clearly that different mantras have different effects/qualities. still the problem remains, which is most effective for me? And what is each one doing? (here I understand why some people crave a good personal teacher so much!)
5 - this was out of desperation but it worked ok. It is more like a prayer/meditation joining - there is a fundamental meaning and we are repeating it thus bringing mind to silence...but it is still the use of the verbal mind...
6 - also worked ok but it has the same problem with breath awareness mentioned above. On the other hand there is another dimension in that there is a sweet physical sensation in that part of the body. but again, as it is not permanent it is not always easy to foolow/find;
7 - this was definitely powerful. but I learned it from an energy healing system (http://www.chioshealing.com/Meditation/MeditationTechnique/meditationtechnique.htm) and wonder how "yogic" it is. I feel this works much the same as a mantra but it has several advantages, in my view, over it - first it uses light instead of sound and maybe light is a more fundamental form of energy (i.e. is sound a form of light or is light a form of sound?). Then the colour has a definite effect on one's energy body. In this case the orange/red colour is warm and probably affects the first chakras or the solar plexus. I come out from this meditation feeling content and warm inside. Another advantage I see in relation to the mantra is that the mantra needs to be started and seen through to the end; with the round orange/red ball it is like the object is always there, we just sometimes steer our attention from it but can come back to it easily just by "looking" at it again (i.e. it did not go anywhere, it is always there but we might not be looking...). It is very visual like that. The few problems with this type of meditation I see are: I find no references anywhere in yoga books to this type of meditation (help anyone?) and there is not much support for it (I tried emailing the author and also the support forums there do not work). For example he advices only one session of about 20min per day and I feel like doing two and don't know if I can! Will I burn up being sensitive as I am?! Can this technique work fine with pranayama and other techniques? In this I really value AYP!
 
So, here it is. Any ideas/feedback will be kindly appreciated. And if you know anything or any book talking about this visualisation technique do let me know.

[YogaIsLife]

It has recently come into my attention that this bouncing from technqiue to technique may actually be an ingrained fear of letting go, expressing as over-analysing of the mind instead of favouring the simple and easy procedure of meditation. I think there may be some truth in it. There is a wall created by our minds and that fear. I probably will be bouncing from method to method until I let go really

I read lesson 366 and the part of the finer points of the technique of meditation hit home with me somehow. There can be a reluctance to let go and let the mantra (or other object) do its thing. It is a subliminal fear of letting go, of the unknown, of losing control.

Anybody out there with this issue? (one more point of comment please!)

It can be quite a mental structure, one that we even are not clearly aware of sometimes! It is really the fear of losing control!

[cosmic]

Hello YIL,

I can relate to your situation. Except that I bounced around for about 5 years before I really committed to doing AYP. During those 5 years, I skipped practice for months at a time, went through several overload/burnout cycles, and kept searching for a better practice. All of this kept me from establishing a stable practice.

Whatever practice/methodology you choose, establishing a stable routine is vital. I can't stress this enough. I feel that my real progress didn't begin until I committed to AYP in early 2008. That year, I just plugged away at it, rain or shine, no matter what was going on in my life. I went through some tough times and felt like giving up because I didn't think AYP was helping. It took me about a year of committed practice until I started experiencing the real fruits.

So my advice is to choose a method and establish a stable routine with it. Be willing to stick with it for at least a year (preferably more). Unfortunately, I can't advise you on which method to choose. That's a totally personal choice and you have to go with your inner guidance on that.

AYP has worked well for me, so I wholeheartedly endorse it. Progress has been steady since 2008. But it's also the only practice I've stuck with for an extended time and become stable with. You could probably get good results with the other methods you mentioned, but even then I feel that the results would come over the long-term.

Hope this helps!  

Love
cosmic

[cosmic]

Also, with regards to feeling like a parrot (or mantra monkey  ), just be aware that over time the mantra becomes much more subtle. It can become non-verbal, where you just have a subtle awareness of it as an impulse within. This is the "refining of the mantra" you might hear people talk about here...

Love
cosmic

[YogaIsLife]

Thanks a lot Cosmic! That was very helpful indeed!

I appreciate the accounts of your experience and can see that we had similar ways of dealing with practice (i.e. bouncing back and forth trying to find the "perfect practice"). I am glad you told me you did that for 5 years! The same could have happened to me. I will seriously consider a method and stick to it (i.e. jump with both feets, not just one). AYP seems the most promising especially because it is so well explained and there is much support, really unparalalelled anywhere else I feel (unless you have a very good personal teacher present). This is important I think. I also find the visualisation method promising but the support there is really very small compared to this, and it is part of a healing system, not of a yogic one (i.e. one seeking union primarily).

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the problem is in fact trusting a method and surrendering to it, letting go. That is why the mantra feels like too much work (and all the parroting etc) because I am not letting it refine, not letting it do what it can do. I am not giving up my control, I am holding on.

I've heard said something quite true that I haven't really thought of before: it is not what the procedure can do for you, but what you can do for the procedure. Hmm, go figure!

[cosmic]

No worries, YIL. If it saves you 3.5 years, I'm a happy guy  

With Love
cosmic

[YogaIsLife]