I always hit a wall in my meditation practice. Resentment about doing it, internal pouting and resistance while doing it. Then feeling guilty and bad about not doing it or not doing it well. The next thing I know, it’s been months since I’ve practiced.
So this weekend I’ve taken a break from my weekly habit of doing the entire Ngondro on Sunday, and yesterday I didn’t do my daily practice of admitting misdeeds and accumulating Hundred Syllable Mantra recitations. Instead I did Tsa Lung yesterday and Sound healing today. These are both about clearing chakras and changing negative states of mind, and right now they’re easier than the Ngondro practices. Hopefully they will ease some of the negativity I feel about Ngondro.
Tsa Lung and Sound Healing are the meditative exercises I started with this time around. To begin with, they seemed like a tedious pain in the ass, but now they seem like a birthday party compared to the Ngondro. I feel more immeidate benefits after doing them, too.
One of the Ngondro practices has helped me at work, however. I use an abbreviated Blue Medicine Buddha meditation while doing massage, but at times I’ve struggled to come up with enough compassion to make it work. In the Boddhichitta section of the Ngondro, you think of someone you love. Then you think about how, in other lives, you’ve had the same kind of loving relationship with everybody else on the planet, even the folks you can’t stand. But bringing to mind that person you love helps you envision goodness and enlightenment coming to everybody alive now.
So when I’ve got somebody on the table, I imagine they’re a person I know and want to help. That makes it so much easier.
