Any meditators here?

[ellenrr]

22. wow. thanks for sharing that--

I was going to ask you if you would want to share anything about how you changed in the 40 years.

It is very subtle isn't it?
For me, altho I have not even been meditating a year, I feel like I have changed dramatically in a way, but then in a way, I am still me.

I also like Thick Nhat Hanh, I have read him, and gone to a couple of meditations. I like how we would meditate and then talk about "worldly" things. Like at this meditation we talked about friendship. It was amazing.

"Mindfulness takes a lifetime to learn, too. The human brain just doesn't work that way and you have to reprogram it."
Yes, I am just starting to appreciate this.

Emotions:
I had an experience thanks to the Dalai Lama book, which I was going to share in my last post, but ran out of steam:
it might be useful to someone reading this. I'll try to be brief.
Every holiday event, tension in me due to seeing my brother and sil. I rage (inwardly) - they don't understand me, they are superficial, they don't want to know who I am,
bla bla bla. Brooding and working self up to a tizzy.
Could not get it out of my mind.
I even told myself- 'You are a meditator. you should be able to control your emotions' (lol)

Yesterday I was in a park, reading the book about the Dalai Lama. In it, he tells the story of a woman who is about to send a very angry, guilt-inducing letter to her daughter, bec. the daughter had left her to spend a holiday somewhere, and the woman felt very bad about it. And then the woman realized that when something arouses huge, inappropriate emotions in her, it is probably a reminder of something that happened when she was a child. So instead of writing the letter she did a meditation using compassion.

I am not exactly sure what the "compassion meditation" is but will look into it.
The book said the woman meditated on giving compassion to her child self for the hurt and pain she had felt.

It made me realize that my holding on SO long to my anger over my siblings, and my intense concentration on it, is also an inappropriate response. Also a reaction to things that hurt me when I was a child, not a reaction to events in current time. Displaced reaction we might say....
When I realized that, the intense brooding about the situation melted away,
happy to say. (mostly).

I just sent a 'chatty' email to my sibling, and included a little "deep" stuff about me, and left it at that. They may get it or not. They may respond or not.
But I am so relieved at being free of having to make them be a certain way.
!

Thanks again for sharing your experience, ladyfrom mo.