some questions from a beginner

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

 

For the past 5 years or so, I have been floundering about in a kind-of

spiritual limbo (after spending quite a few years rooted in a solid

christian practice which ended up being - in the end- too dogmatic,

closed-minded and constraining for me personally. Very intellectual based

wanderings--ruminating on the metaphorical nature of all religions, reading

100s of books on different religious traditions, spending a week in this

tradition and a month in that traditional - in essence flitting about and

being very mental about the whole thing. (digging ten one foot deep holes

instead of one ten foot deep hole as the old story goes) Over the past

year, I have come to realize the importance of ritual and discipline in

spirituality, although it has been a bit of a struggle, and i'm learning a

lot of the lessons the "hard way": through health challenges and

mental/physical illness. I have been drawn to make kundalini yoga a part of

my spiritual practice, and especially a part of this daily discipline, but

I am having problem achieving "liftoff"; ie; spending two nights in

meditation, then spending two nights off, then one on, one off etc. I

decided to start with 40 nights of "Sa Ta Na Ma" and although I tend to be

oriented towards immediate gratification (I've been doing hatha yoga for a

whole month know, how come I'm not enlightened and still can't sit in

lotus?", I've tried to promise myself that I would reserve any

judgements/observations until the 40 day period was over and then try to

look back at anything gained from it -- I say this because I have, for the

past few years, felt extremely cut off from any source of connection to

Divine Love (and whatever linguistic box you want to put it in - I am

preferring Goddess at the moment) and I am hoping that daily ritual acting

as if that connection was there, will help me recognize that connection

again (which I know is always there, I just seem to have misplaced it at

the moment)

 

so I guess my question is this: aside from just sit there and do it, which

is probably the best advice, does anyone have recommendations for being

more disciplined in their practice?

 

Also, a practical question. How do people keep time in their meditation.

Usually for meditation I just sit for about 20 or 30 minutes, however it

seems that many KY meditations require rather precise time frames divided

into different parts and I was wondering what worked best for people for

marking time without being distracting.

 

namaste,

eric