Listening to God

"Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God". ~Author Unknown

There are a lot of reasons why the Insight Timer community and app gets mentioned when people talk about meditation tools. It's cool to open the app and see that you are meditating with a group of people that can be large or small and it's also cool that you can join groups, add friends, etc. but my favorite part of the app is the diversity of meditations (guided and unguided) that it makes available to you. It's exposed me to a host of people and sites that feed my interest in meditation but it's also helped me to understand what works best for me.

This morning for example I listened to a breath meditation by Sharon Salzberg from the Soundstrue website. What I liked about her meditation was that she didn't overtalk. There was plenty of silence in between her words and that's a nice contrast from some guided meditations where the speaker seems to feel a need to talk you through every second of your time together. Hey, I understand that's part of the deal but including a healthy amount of silence implies trust between the guide and the listener and I believe that's a good thing.

Another nice thing about the 10-minute or so meditation was what she referred to as "the magic moment". In her way of explaining, that's when you drift away from the breath, realize you've done so and then make it back. Instead of thinking about that moment as somehow being a failure to stay focused, she mindfully re-defined that as a moment of mindfulness as in "there goes my focus, let's back to the breath". Hey, it's going to happen so why not give yourself a pat on the back for realizing that you've drifted away, no damage has been done, bring it back home. Isn't the former what we tend to do? Make a mistake and never let go of it?