Unmeditation

I have a real problem with the modern 'spirituality' or 'mind, body, spirit' approaches to non-empirical science-based things. I didn't when I was much younger: I think for me as a teenager it meant engagement in other layers of reality than the concrete physical world, only without the dogma of religion becoming involved.

Now, however, I feel the alarm bell that the word 'spirituality' rings in me is that the word *could* refer to some fluffy, self-indulgent unreality that leaves the reality of our lives behind. I suspect this is really what it meant for me in the past - my own approach was probably more feel-good than was good for me. I think it is also a witch thing - if my engagement in other realms than the visible one does not bear visible fruit, I'm doing something wrong.

Meditation is a practice which has rather crept up on me against my own inclinations. In fact it's taken me a long time even to call what I do meditation, although it plainly is. I knew people involved in the World Community for Christian Meditation in my youth, & some of them were frankly turds, which I think put me off the word as well as the idea of the practice.

How would a hedge witch approach meditation? For me it is an ability which has just happened after many years of journeys in & around my personal hedge. Sometimes I make an effort to do it consciously: old school as I am in some ways I do it in front of the altar, with candles lit & time it with a joss stick. The timing it without using time is an important thing for me, because it means a suspension of normal time for a different sort of time. I sit on a chair rather than the various cushions & stools suggested in the literature. The point to the posture is that your spine is aligned in a certain way, & you are therefore aligned with the earth in a certain way. This is where it really begins to cross over into witchcraft: if you read Starhawk's description of the Tree of Life exercise in spiral dance, the exercise is almost exactly what is being done in sitting meditation.

And what you do then is, well, you meditate. Like magic, it is one of those things you just have to do. There is a lot of nonsense written about it, but for me it is a non-linear time of existing differently. A time of not having to do or think anything. Speaking as someone who just found himself doing it then realised what it was, I think there's no point reading the books, you just have to do it - mind you, I'd also say this about magic. If you can allow yourself to forget that you can't do it, all of a sudden there you are, doing it.

The other major similarity it has with magic is the mindset where you both have to will something completely single-mindedly, & yet at the same time not do it. Perhaps this is meditation's (& magic's) greatest effect, that it enables the practitioner to think in this way that is the sole requirement of magic. I certainly can't think of many ways of developing a single-minded will, which yet does not keep drawing back that which is willed by scratching at it.

Do I perhaps need to say that (again like magic) you don't need any of the equipment in the books & websites? If you think you are doing magic you are, & one of the most classical set-ups for zazen meditation requires nothing more than a cushion & a wall.

For my next strange experience... For some time I have wanted a chicken brick of the sort that used to be sold by Habitat. Then Habitat closed & the desire went into remission, but has resurfaced recently. Some weeks I was looking online for one, only to find that they were ruinously expensive, & I was very wary of entrusting something that delicate to the post. That night I dreamt that I was talking to the cat about this, & in my dream he was telling me how he likes chicken too! Then today an unused Habitat one turned up in a charity shop for only a fiver. Well done, familiar!

------------------