The Big Takeaway: the Calm After the Storm

Glimmering Butterfly Project –  Day 16

Today was the first time I had ever really woken up and went straight to meditation. Not only that, but I went about an hour with relative ease compared to most of my attempts up to this point. Normally when I wake up, I need to fiddle around on the phone or computer, or walk around, or watch something on YouTube before pulling myself away and sitting down for some time in meditation.

But not today. Granted, I did scroll a bit through Facebook, but even that lasted drastically shorter than usual. It was just enough to get my eyes working and my brain’s gears spinning. But it was almost as if the meditation was calling me to go sit, rather than feeling like it was something I “had’ to do.

The first thirty minutes were rough. My mind was all over the place. And like every time I meditate for a short period of time, I feel like I’m not getting any value out of it. But for the days that I do sit with it long enough, there’s like a threshold that I seem to hit at a certain point. It’s not always the same, but it’s around the thirty minute mark, plus or minus.

Whether it’s something I’m doing that helps initiate it (like focusing on my breaths, consciously orienting myself towards the heart, etc), or if it just happens naturally… I’m not really sure. I think it’s a combination of the two that can impact when I hit that threshold.

I remember trying to find some sort of solution or answer to something. Maybe that’s a sign I wasn’t even using meditation right for me: that I was trying to find a solution before I had even asked a question.

Although true, my Glimmering Butterfly Project has been revolving around following the heart, but sometimes the heart speaks so softly that it’s hard to hear what it’s trying to say over the idle chatter of my mind.

So sometimes I’m finding that I have to be really intentional about the questions I’m asking, how I’m asking them, and being very careful to actually listen and feel what it’s trying to say.

Since I failed to actually write this immediately after I did my meditation, both the question and the answer feel pretty fuzzy to me. I know they were important, but also not necessarily “new” to me, but it’s always good to hear and feel the same message multiple times.

I vaguely remember it being something about how to operate from the heart – because as my last post shared, I haven’t really been on top of my meditations and Kylegos (doing them in the morning as soon as possible).

But once I hit that threshold… That big takeaway that I got from asking that question was completely overshadowed by something else.

The big takeaway was no takeaway at all. It wasn’t the answer I got.

Instead…

It was the feeling I had once I got past those thirty minutes. I just felt calm. I’ve written about it before and here I was experiencing it all over again. It’s one thing to “know,” and another thing to feel. And it seems as though I need to reset myself and get to that feeling once again, every day. Hopefully the gap between a frantic mind and a calm mind gets smaller and smaller with continued practice.

My big takeaway then wasn’t so much that I got the answer to a question or a direction that I wanted to move in… But rather the feeling of calmness allowed me to feel like ME with no strings attached to other people. Normally, my default mind likes to think about what other people are thinking (about me, what I have to say, what I’m typing, etc.).

But by going that far into the meditation and just being with it, it was like choppy waters from a storm (my chattering mind) started to calm down. The storm had passed by simply relaxing in the boat and waiting it out. Sure, I had to use a bucket to pour some of the gathering water out of the boat from time to time, but eventually the storm passed…

And everything got calm.

The pressure and intensity of my own mind, of all the “voices” I constantly imagine people having around me (or thinking about me), suddenly got quiet and distant. Sure, they were still there, but it was like I had moved myself into a different room down the hall from a party I was attending.

I could still hear some of it, but it was dulled and far enough away that I could focus on what was happening in MY room. Just me, by myself. Quiet.

I could think, I could see, I could feel. And once again, it no longer felt like I had to entertain so many different ideas and thoughts and fears. I could just be with myself and get my own answers.

Like a blindfold lifted, I could actually look around and realize where I was, instead of trying to figure out where I was in my head.

I could feel this warmth and confidence that I could just do whatever I wanted. And coincidentally, that was the actual answer I was looking for when I started to shift over that threshold: how do I be myself, how do I connect to myself and operate from the heart (or something like that)?

The answer wasn’t a specific strategy, a specific thing for me to do, or anything like that. The only thing I had to “do” was be in THIS state as often as possible.

Because in this state, I can be calm, I can be collected, I can be confident … I can be ME.

And ME is a blank canvas.

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Side note that I realized today… I’m feeling a little more collected and calm with my voice than usual. Now this has only really been noticeable in a couple of one-on-one situations and mostly when I’m by myself doing Kylegos, but I think the Kylego exercises are helping me to also become more aware of my own voice habits and allow me to consciously try to improve my speaking habits by slowing down and articulating better.

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Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash