Meditation

I can’t stress enough how valuable I have found meditation.  I have been doing no-mind meditation for the last week or so, as I can, and each time I leave it with a sense of profound peace.  Today I lay in front of my altar, and just breathed deep, letting thoughts pass.  When I finally got up, I thought “I wonder if I got down to no-mind”, and that was when it hit me that I had.  The passage of time seemed to take forever, yet I was only down for about fifty minutes.  The deep breathing put me into a peaceful, passive state, and I found a lot really extraneous or ridiculous thoughts, from wondering if the candle would be okay (it’s a pillar candle about elbow to wrist high) to asking “Am I there yet?”.

As the cacophony died down, I felt myself just slip slowly into silence, felt my breathing slow deeper, felt the world around me contract into darkness.  It seemed like I was there forever just floating, breathing, blood circulating, everything being as it should, and me, just being.  I felt very present in that moment, and yet not.  I was and was not, I was there and I was elsewhere.  That is something like what the Ginnungagap feels like.  Like it is nowhere and everywhere when you experience it…and yet the experience seems to stretch on forever.  I don’t know if my experience of no-mind and the Ginnungagap are the same thing in itself, but the experience of each is profound.  I feel very-much at peace, at ease, and my muscles feel loose.  I feel good, and like I’ve shed some emotional baggage.