Since completing my Vipassana course in Jan this year, I have been trying to scrape time to practise atleast once a day, if not two (like they suggest). The idea is to find a place at home and practise Vipassana for a period of 1 hour, twice a day (morning & evening). I have been mostly regular with the formal practise. In addition to that, I meditate during my bus journeys, long drives, traffic signal pauses (which can be 5 min + in Bangalore). Something inspired me to go on runs, three times a week, and practise meditation during the run also.
While my meditations are improving, it has not been impacting me much in my daily living. Infact I have been noticing that I am more angry and irritable these days than ever before.
I was sulking about my lack of progress with Dr. Sudarshan Rao (he introduced me to Vipassana in the first place). He told me that deep & noticeable progress in Vipassana takes time. And that I should continue to practise with faith that things will fall in place. In the meantime, I shouldn’t get too caught up with “goals”. The whole point of meditation is to learn and practise being in the present-moment and not be chasing a non-reality. Non-reality in my case is the idea that I will be peaceful and emotionally stable all the time. Thats NOT how I am right now. So meditating to CAUSE that is chasing non-reality.
He shared with me an article that made a lot of sense to me and has given me a new opening to continue practising meditation. The article asks us to meditate with intentions, but not goals. As Ed Halliwell rightly puts it in the article, one cant force sleep to happen. One can only create conditions (turing off lights, lying down on the bed etc..) for sleep to show up gracefully. Similarly the one cant force peace & emotional-stability to happen – one can only create conditions for such realities to show up by the practise of meditation. Those results will show-up by themselves gracefully. Until then, one has to simply note whats happening in the here and now, within the framework of one’s body AND without resistance.