Sometimes when you’re stressed and panicking about everyday life problems, you get tired, run down and so – you go to bed. Only to find when you get there that your eyes are fixed open, your brain running at 100 miles an hour. After a time you tend to focus your thoughts down onto something familiar or comfortable and this begins to relax you somewhat. This can be a subconscious move - your brain retreating a little to stop it overheating. I always end up on skateboarding. The physical act of it is probably the main reason, constant flow, carving, the smoothness of surfaces and good weather required to be able to skate are all positive images, and thinking of things I want to do or places I would like to be is a great distraction. The vision of bright yellow sunshine in a transworld blue sky while in a pitch dark room at 1am seems to be enough to metaprogramme the grey tissue and ensure a slow drift into the world of dreams.
So thinking on this, I decided to write a piece called ‘Concrete Meditation’ due to the images of skateparks and grey transitions that would frequent these thoughts. And as I sometimes do before using a title, I Googled it to check if it already existed in some other form, as sometimes I tend to avoid an overused or already ‘taken’ term. This is what I found:
Meditation is of two main kinds, viz., Saguna (concrete) meditation and Nirguna (abstract) meditation. In concrete meditation the Yogic student concentrates on the form of the Lord Krishna, Rama, Siva, Hari, Gayatri or Sri Devi. In abstract meditation he concentrates the whole energy of the mind on one idea of God or Atman and avoids comparisons of memories and all other ideas. The one idea fills the whole mind.
Now I’m not saying I ride around grinding curbs on ‘God’ but it’s the practice of focusing on form vs idea that I find fits what I meant really well. So seeing as it does already exist, I won’t be writing the piece I was planning to because after discovering that info, I guess I don’t need to anymore. Who knew, I’d been meditating all along.