Meditation Update

My recent meditation practice has become consistent recently – not consistent as in “daily.” It was already that. Consistent as in the experience.

I go through a slightly-too-precious process of settling into my meditation seat.

I draw my attention to my breath.

Once I get focused on it and once I’ve drawn a lung-full of air, I begin to count breaths. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. One. Inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale. One. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. Two. Inhale, inhale….

After counting up to and then down again from ten, I allow the calisthenics of breath to settle into watching the mind.

I’ll get snagged on a thought or two, away for a time, then coming back to the posture, balancing my spine. Or to the breath, feeling it crossing the nostrils’ horizon.

And watching the mind, I’ll hear a voice I’ve not heard before say something I’ve not thought before. I’ll note “voice” and wonder for a moment whether it’s just an oddment of the sediment at the bottom of my mind's pool, swirling up, or whether a quieted mind, once the self relaxes, allows others in.

Or perhaps the mind will follow some other meander or two.

But then, eventually – consistently – I meet fear.

The fear I meet doesn't seem to appear in the body it wears in daily life. And for reasons I’ve not discerned, it never seems to present itself in the same attire twice.

One day it poses as a remembered dream.

One day a kabuki-styled painted dancer who suddenly turns his gaudy eyes toward me.

One day it seems a viscosity against moving deeper into mind.

Though I’ve not discerned the why, the what is getting clearer. The fear becomes a stopping place. A door that I don’t open. A place to resist and insist and exist.

Perhaps until the -isting itself relents?