Feeling Everything

Meditation is a strong tool that can help compose oneself when faced with tough situations. One key aspect of meditation is to be in the moment, let thoughts pass, and just feel everything around you - your body pressing down on your seat, your body moving as you breathe, the wind on your skin, the sounds around you, the smell - just everything. They say you shouldn’t restrict any thoughts, but acknowledge the thoughts and let them pass. You shouldn’t even restrict any impulse. If you want to sneeze in the middle of your meditation, sneeze. If your face is itching, scratch it. If there is a fly buzzing around, listen to it. But if it settles on your face and you are uncomfortable, smack at it. Meditation is all about being comfortable wherever you are and whatever is going on around you. It helps you be present, to be in the moment so that your mind is not cluttered and all over the place. It helps you calm down.

All good things, but here is my dilemma. If you continuously practice meditation, you eventually get good at being in the now, at being present, and at feeling everything at that moment. All your senses are up for reception and acceptance. Isn’t that scary, though? I understand how it can declutter your mind. But what about the physical sensations? Aren’t you actually practicing to feel…every…physical…sensation at that moment? Won’t that eventually increase your ability to feel physical pain? I bet it can increase your threshold as well, but as you calm down, won’t you feel every prick, every sting, every slow torture?

Isn’t that scary…with where the world is headed right now, you are training yourself to calm down and feel all its evils. It can be things as silly as the pain you feel while threading your eyebrows to the grave physical tortures that prisoners of wars have to undergo…from their nails being plucked out to being waterboarded and even raped. 

Why? Why should we feel everything? Or am I freaking out over nothing? 

Ah…time to meditate.

P.S: I was told that the kind of meditation I am talking about here is called Mindfulness Meditation and that there is an aspect called Equanimity that should come along with Mindfulness. Equanimity is “a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind.”

Probably should let my artist in on this one.