I first heard about the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care (NYZCCC) at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium in March. On Monday, I visited the center and attended my first meditation class and dharma talk. We talked about living a dual experience, an especially relevant topic as we sift our way through these confusing times. We have the ability to hold happiness and sadness, excitement and fear, longing and contentment.
I have a regular meditation practice that has been so helpful in helping me to find more peace and contentment. After giving up on a meditation practice several times in my life, it feels wonderful to finally understand how powerful this discipline is. I used to think of it as wasting time just sitting around. Now I look forward to it as a gateway to make sense of my life, particularly when it comes to understanding a dual-experience.
On Monday night at NYZCCC, I showed up the class feeling a lot of stress from my day, so stressful that I began to have a dull, throbbing pain on the side of my head. My spine felt stiff and in general I felt uncomfortable in my skin. Though I have experienced the transformative effects of meditation, I thought this class would be less than valuable. I stayed anyway; I figured if I’m there I might as well just check it out and see how it goes. If nothing else, it might give me some good writing content.
My meditation began as usual, trying to get comfortable on this foreign meditation cushion, surrounded by people whom I didn’t know and conducted by a leader who was convinced I was someone he knew. (I’ve never seen him before in my life.) I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. The stress from the day was very much with me. I felt small, as if my voice and my point-of-view didn’t matter. In a word I felt powerless but very much wanted to feel empowered.
A few minutes into my meditation, I began to feel my spine growing and felt as if my body was moving backwards. My hands began to tingle and feel disproportionately large compared to the rest of my body. Every breath drew more energy into my chest. The aching in my head was suddenly gone.
A while later, though I honestly don’t know how long I was in that state, I opened my eyes. I immediately looked at my hands to see if they were larger. They weren’t though I could still feel that tingle from my meditation and I actually thought for a moment that from the corner of my eyes I could see a faint outline around my hands that made them appear much larger.
All this to say that meditation is a practice in the truest sense of the word. Through our experience, we can tap into an existence much larger than ourselves. If we ask for help, we will receive it, perhaps not in the form we expect. There is a mystery embedded in meditation that cannot be explained through logic and reason. It cannot be articulated. Only felt.
Christa Avampato 