Since Wednesday I’ve been working on adding meditation to my training schedule. First, I did some research. Actually, I should qualify that; I did a tiny bit of research. I wanted to get an online resource that was credible and that spoke to me; it just so happened that this came about almost immediately. On the first page of my search for guided meditations, the fifth result was a link to Audio Dharma: Guided Meditations. I was gobsmacked and thought “Are you shitting me?!” Then I clicked on the link and in short order knew that this was where my meditation training would start to take shape.

Audio Dharma is an archive of dharma talks given by various speakers from the Insight Meditation Centre. After perusing the list of talks, I downloaded several by Gil Fronsdal.

In a series of talks introducing people to meditation, Fronsdal describes meditation as the act of being present and, to do so, practitioners need to train, settle and calm the mind. This makes sense to me. I can do this; I will train, settle and calm my mind.

During meditation we should attend to our experience. And if that experience is not being able to be present, as long as we are in a state of attending to that experience we are not failing. Perfect, there’s no way to fail, I can really do this!

So, given all this, I can honestly say that my first attempt at a guided mediation was a success. Here’s what I recall of my first experience.

My Inner Dialogue:

-I can do this, breathing, how hard is that?

-breathe in, breathe out

-in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out

-I’m good at this, breathe in, breathe out, in, out…

-okay, now I have to be mindful of what is happening to my body as I breathe…

-this feels good, my neck and shoulders are relaxed, and my arms are comfortable

-my stomach is pulled in like I’m pulling my belly button to my spine. What? Gil wants me to relax my stomach? How do you do that when you’re sitting up straight? Okay, let it go, Tracey. Let the Buddha belly out. Let it out. You can do it. Breathe in and breathe out the gut…agh… this feels pretty good…

-breathe in, breathe out

-in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out

-I feel like I’m pulsating with each breath, like in the Matrix when Neo realizes that he is “The One”

-in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out

-The Matrix is such an amazing movie; I’m so Neo right now

-in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out

-I’m totally going to put this in my blog…