Meditation breakthrough

I am ashamed to admit this, but I don't really meditate.  Once a year or so I'll come across a book or website that convinces me that I will never be a real magic worker/spiritual seeker/decent human being unless I do sitting meditation, so I decide to recommit myself to the practice.  This time, I tell myself, it will be different.  This time I will stick with it.  This time, I too shall become a Real Witch (tm).  I bask in the imagined glory of my hypothetical sitting meditation practice and the enlightenment that will soon be mine.  So I sit down.  I close my eyes.  I focus on my breathe.  And then my monkey mind kicks in and starts babbling.  I tell myself to let it go and return to breathing.  Monkey mind starts babbling again, a little louder this time.  I breathe and let it go.  With every return, the babble becomes louder and more insistent, and the responding voice becomes louder and more irritable, and pretty soon all of the different parts of my personality are screaming at each other, poo is being flung every which way, and the whole mess collapses into itself like a black hole, sending me straight to some cookies or the internet.  It generally takes three days of this before I decide that meditation is just not worth it and I run screaming into the night while berrating myself for being such a quitter.

Sometimes I decide to be smart and consider other forms of meditation, such as mantras.  That works much better, but still sputters out after a few weeks.  I don't know why.

Most recently I reached the exercise called "Seeking Still Vision" in Kissing the Limitless (wonderful book -- I can not recommend it highly enough).  The exercise is basically a candle gazing meditation.  Both because I honestly am trying to do all of the exercises in the book as I go along and because it sounded like it might be more effective than empty mind meditation, I gave it a try.  After approximately 15 seconds of staring, my eyes were starting to transform into spheres of pain.  I forced my way through 5 minutes and spent the rest of the evening with an aftermirage of a flame dancing before me.  Having concluded that doing injury to my retina is not part of my spiritual path, I walked away again.

Fast forward to yesterday:  I still really want to give this a try.  I can see how meditation would be a valuable contribution to my spiritual practice.  While I don't think I ever need to spend an hour with a blank mind, it would surely be beneficial to develop the ability to sit with one for five minutes or so, just to open to the universe for guidance and connection.  Heck, if it could just give me relief from the relentless voice of depression when it's at it's worst I would consider it a win!  And I like the idea of candle gazing (let's be honest -- I just really like candles.  When asked what I consider to be the most important tool of my practice I always respond "candles").  So I had to fix the eye pain problem.  My first try was to hide the flame behind a mesh screen, but the flame was still too bright.  Then I tried to hide it behind a sheet of paper taped around a glass votive holder, but that diffused the light too much, so there wasn't any flame to gaze at, just a warm glow.  Then I ripped the paper off -- apparently the glass of the votive holder is enough of a barrier that the flame no longer hurts my eyes.  Yay!  But I was restless, couldn't get myself to settle down into meditation.  So I did what I always do when I'm having trouble settling into ritual space when I'm alone -- I started to sing.  Just a wordless tune, wandering around the scale at will, but eventually it settled into a distinct phrase, repeated over and over again.  Eventually the singing fell away, leaving me in blessed silence.  I sat that way, gently observing the flame and my thoughts, until the daily chatter had firmly re-asserted itself.  I made sure to record the musical phrase on my computer (oh netbook, how I love thee!) before I forgot it, and used it again today.  Again, it sent me right into the quiet frame of mind needed for meditation. 

I don't want to get too self-congratulatory here -- it's only been two days! -- but I have a good feeling about this newest addition to my practice.  I still don't think meditation will ever be my touchstone, but I will be glad if I can make it a regularly used part of my spiritual toolbox.