Meditating Between Two Trees

Another early morning meditation session, and to be honest, it could have gone better.  I didn’t sleep last night, and as I sit here shaking my head at myself for trying to “focus” during a day I know “focusing” will be entirely impossible, I hear this voice in the back of my head that says “but, you told yourself if you can focus on a morning like this, with only 3 hours of sleep, that’s great brain training for when you’re not exhausted… right?”  At this point, I should be able to cut glass with my meditative gaze (through my own eyelids, of course).  Don’t stand directly in front of me when I’m meditating the next time I’m freshly revived for the occasion.  I can’t be held responsible for what happens when my “focus” kicks in .

So, I’ve have this on-again-off-again love affair with mindful meditation for the past 8, or so, months.   At first I thought it wasn’t helping at all, but I actually did begin noticing some interesting differences in the way I dealt with certain situations, and the impact it had on my lucid dreaming was pretty incredible.  I wound up stopping for a few months for some reason, I can’t remember why, but I started back up again a few weeks ago, maybe longer, and I’m getting myself back on track. I don’t know if anything is happening, brain wise, yet? But for the past few days I’ve gotten around halfway through my indoor meditation time, which I lay down for, and one of my cats has taken to making it his mission to cuddle with me – aggressively.  I don’t know why that is.  If it’s just him?  Or if something is happening to me physically, or mentally, that’s causing him to think I’m good cuddle material halfway through that session.  If, for some reason, I’m actually attracting him because of some weird change that’s happening that I wasn’t aware of.  

It’s always about 30 minutes in, and he comes directly up to me and after a bit of kneading he lays down directly against my leg.  Completely ruins my session.  

I know what you’re thinking – “why don’t you close the door?”  I laugh.  You don’t know my cats.  And this one weighs over 20 pounds.  

The first time he did it I was kind of like, “Ok, I guess I’m done meditating today”. By the 3rd day he did it I actually pushed him away from me and told him to get down.  He looked at me like I’d just popped his balloon and stole his candy.  But today.  Today he went above and beyond.  Today he jumped up onto the bed, and he faced me the entire time he was kneading. Before today, he always had his butt pointed my way, but not today.  And when he was done kneading he laid down with purpose, like he owned the joint, and he stared directly at me.  Intensely. No blinking.  No purring.  No cuddle-cuddle stuff.  No.   Just – staring.

After I came downstairs I got to thinking about that cat that used to visit people in their rooms in the nursing home it lived?  Do you remember that cat?  It would visit people who were going to die within 24 or 48 hours.  It would lay with them and they’d pass away.  Then I thought, maybe some cats can sense things about people.  I mean, there has to be some sort of science involved at some point, right?  

Anyway, he loves to cuddle with me when I’m working at my desk (another incredibly convenient time to have a 20+ pound cat laying in my lap) but that’s pretty much the only time he likes to do that.  Otherwise, he’s sprawled out in some wide open space somewhere else around the house.  I can’t think of another time when he’s wanted to cuddle with me when it wasn’t the middle of the night.  So it got me wondering, maybe meditating has caused some sort of effect my cat can sense?  I dunno, something to think about, I guess.

Turns out my hammock is the best place to meditate uninterrupted, and once I get the hang of taking in all the sounds outside, I’ll be golden.   Up until a few days ago I had no idea just how many different kinds of birds we have here in our tiny little mid-coast town.