One of the things I have learned from sitting is that I tend to expect an outcome by thinking I am controlling the circumstances. Like if I am feeling calm, and I relax into a comfy chair in a pretty place with my wool blanket over my legs…a smile on my face, I'll have a certain kind of experience! Well, that is A. Never true. B. By staying open to what IS actually happening in a sit, it's always more interesting, and more rewarding. and C. I tend to do that in LIFE, and it ain't true there either!
I have come to really enjoy this fact! Of course in the early days of my learning how to sit, this was horrible!! I hated that when all I wanted was a peaceful and possibly enlightened sit, instead many difficult feelings would come up that left me feeling worse than before I meditated! Who needs THAT? I learned of course that for hundreds of years millions of people have gone through that too. And as Sharon told me once, "It's like building the foundation of a house."
I appreciate now how all the sits did, and still do, build a foundation of me "staying open in a sit, and in life." It puts a smile on my face. One that I did not plan out.
