Lots more people are hearing about meditation. Its come into the mainstream. Many who haven't tried it, if they think of it's possible benefits, think about reducing the stress of a busy life, or reducing anxiety about the future. Others think, about it in ways that politely dismiss it - it's okay but not for me, i don't need it. As one person, an artist, no less, said to me - "oh, you mean crystal gazing?" "My painting is really a meditation." A big rationale for not trying it out is that, as several people have said "I just can't sit still that long."
But, some do cross the bridge, try it out. I have and it is hard to sit still, but useful to look at what i do when i'm trying. The poem below i wrote to try and replicate the experience of those first few months.
Meditation Virgin
Medication’s solid
chunks of it to swallow
follow through my mouth down into my belly
its tendrils radiate
warm my sense of grace or gratitude or plain relief
a short cut to a glad-that’s-over.
Meditation’s not so tangible
a subtle alien
invited into the incessant streaming
plugged into my heartbeats.
No pill to pop.
No tendrils radiate.
Just sit and float inside my skin
close my eyes, be still.
Feel my breathing in and out my nose
while I watch it, count to ten
and then again and then again
for heaven’s sake…
I’m urged keep at it and deeper you will go
without knowing what that deeper is
Just keep at it.
Try to not get lost in thought
come back gently when you do.
So I do, because I do
until a first time when I sense a subtle shift
a soft implosion
my heartbeat slows
my body sinks
I try to hold that feeling.
It floats away like smoke
sidelined by an update of regrets or fears.
Faith is hard.
I’m used to payoffs.
So many times I sit inside my skin
and none shows up
until there came that noiseless moment
I was walking with the moon
passing overhead without a comment
and I just let it in
kept walking, following the moon
and the body turned into that noiseless moment
the moon and I and nowhere else
and there was peace
while I kept walking.