Butterfly In My Head
I’m happy but I’m slightly nervous, it’s like there is a butterfly in my head, flying around, thinking all these things, unable to settle down. So I’m doing meditation and it occurs to me that I’m happy but I’m not calm. I start to focus on my breath.
Having a mental illness such as Bipolar Disorder makes me conscious of the fact that if I get too happy I could become manic. But sometimes this hinders me from just being human. I should be allowed to be happy and not think it’s a disease.
Usually, I’m looking for this euphoric feeling when I meditate, today I realized I already had that but was feeling slightly anxious. So I breathed in and out very slowly and felt something resembling peace.
I am going to go back to meditating, but I will be back here…
It’s weird, I really have a good time when I am meditating, but there is a part of me that checks the time and wants it to be over. I don’t know how to stay in that state. I only meditate for like half an hour every day. That’s not a lot in meditation Olympics. Yogis and spiritual gurus spend hours meditating every day.
It’s not easy to stop your mind from thinking, especially if you are in the phase I am currently in where that butterfly in my brain is doing gymnastics.
I repeat god’s name in Punjabi, Waheguru, over and over again while I meditate. The mantra helps me concentrate. Also, I wonder though, who is this god that I am breathing in and out? What is he made of, what is she? I feel she is all love and happiness and peace. I want to be her, that is why I say her name.
But god is more mysterious than that, isn’t he? God is not just wonderful, he created wonder, he is wonder himself. And we are god. I know a lot of people might think it’s blasphemous to say that, but that is what I believe. “Have I not told you, yea are gods?”--The Bible.
I don’t think they meant that metaphorically in that verse, but what do I know about the Bible? I took a course in college and didn’t even read the whole thing. I will be honest, I found it tedious. I hope that does not offend anyone, but it bored me.
Perhaps the truth is boring. Sometimes I get bored when I’m meditating. I get bored paying attention to my breath and saying a mantra over and over again. But the impact it has on my psychology cannot be overstated. I am sane now because I started to meditate. Period. I am not depressed, after fighting depression for more than twenty years, after starting my spiritual practice.
That’s all that matters to me. I don’t care about anything else. Most days I think of it as a chore, even though I am trying to embrace the fact that life itself is a breathing technique, a kind of meditation. If life is a meditation, it is hard. It is hard to meditate. It is hard to live. But it is good.
Life is better when I meditate. This works for me. It is the only thing that works. I am a mess without it. I mean I’m still a mess, but a cleaner mess.
I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an asshole, but meditation saved me. I don’t mean to sound like a Born Again Christian. I kind of sound like a born again Hindu, even though I’m not Hindu. Many Sikhs would say I’m not really Sikh.
So what am I?
Why do you need a label? Why do I? I am what I am. I am neither necessarily religious or spiritual, but I am kind of religious and spiritual, all at the same time. I am both and neither. I am just doing my thing.
I didn’t invent this concept by any means, nor am I telling you something profound that you have not heard before. You probably know that meditation is good for you, countless medical and scientific studies have proven that it is.
But I didn’t do a study of other people, I am only studying myself. I am my own lab experiment. Me and that butterfly buzzing in my head are the only two members of this statistical analysis. And if this all in my imagination, well where else does god live except in our imagination? He is just as much a figment of our imaginations as he is real.
Life has been much too hard for me to not do the things that make me sane and happy and healthy. I’ve only recently become those things on a consistent basis. Being creative and moving my body has also helped tremendously.
But the base of everything is my breath. I can finally breathe.
Spring is here. Let’s all breathe it in together. Go outside. See the world. Feel it. Live it.
Be it.
nina