boiled potatoes

So I went to the meditation retreat and had a very interesting experience.

Basically, I had what one would be tempted to call "bad meditation" the whole time. I was exhausted and kept falling asleep, and my back hurt unless I sat with perfect posture.

I kept having weird little dreams with my eyes open, like, that the sweater of the person in front of me was changing colors, or that the person in front of me was scratching their leg or talking to a neighbor--then I'd wake up and they were sitting there motionless.

So I felt like it wasn't gonna be of any benefit to me.

On Sunday, toward the end, we got into smaller groups to talk about our experiences and a guy next to me said that he had read that "meditation when you're angry is like boiling a pot of potatoes..."

(What the fuck is he talking about?? I thought)

"...it seems like nothing's changing, but gradually, they get softer."

And suddenly I realized that that had EXACTLY been my experience.

Saturday night after a whole day of hours & hours of "bad meditation," I went home and was able to have a good cry, talk to Loopy, and feel that rage (see previous post) start to loosen and melt. It had seriously not occurred to me that this might have been possible because of my meditation all day, however "bad."

Pretty cool eh... the teachers have always said that there's no such thing as "bad meditation," that it is beneficial no matter whether it feels "good" or "bad" while you're doing it.

Huh.