Meditation: Calm, How to Meditate: Eye of the Hurricane Length: 10 minutes Where: Home Office/Guest Room, Los Angeles How It Felt: Still & Strong
This meditation was powerful for me. It explored the “eye of the hurricane” feeling- the idea that no matter how chaotic everything is around you, there is a still, strong place within that you can always go to.
To be honest, this was how I survived my childhood. No matter how crazy things were at home, no matter how awful people could be at school or at work, no matter how hard things got, I found ways to escape. Not physically, but mentally.
I would get lost in a book, or, as I wrote about before, start daydreaming of better things. I knew there was peace inside me that I wasn’t finding in my surroundings, and I would hide there until the storm passed.
Sometimes, the storms were inside me, too, and those were the hardest times. But, when I could manage to quiet them, usually by doing something artistic, like acting or singing or writing poetry, then it would be safe inside me again.
I tried to pass this on to my siblings the best I could. I taught them to always have something to look forward to, so they could go inside and focus on that when things were bad. I would sometimes hide them away when there was fighting, distract them with games or jokes. I tried to teach them that everything they needed was inside them, because it was, and because I knew if we all spent our lives looking for validation from our parents, it wasn’t coming.
I’ve let this slip over the years because it was a survival mechanism I don’t need anymore, but I want to cultivate that feeling again for other reasons. I want to be slow to anger when it doesn’t serve me to be angry. I want to feel peaceful when someone tries to get a rise out of me. I want to know, no matter what happens, I have a little shelter that I carry with me where I’m always safe.
I don’t want my inner life to be controlled by my outer circumstances, ever.
I don’t want to give anyone or anything that power over me.
I worked too hard and grew too strong to let that happen.
My Year of Meditation 