Advanced Meditation

What 50 Years of Meditation Taught Me.

At the age of 18, I contracted tuberculosis and had to spend a year in a sanatorium. These circumstances proved ideal for starting a meditation practice habit. With some interruptions, I kept it up, intensifying the practice with each decennium. Occasionally I regress and skip a day (or even a week), but I’ll always return to it as has become the core of my being.
The things I’ll share are probably too difficult for beginners. They are also not suitable if you’re living a very busy and intense life and need a sound uninterrupted 8-hour sleep.

I developed this discipline as an answer to overcoming feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness and feeling isolated in the first 40 years of my life.

Meditation does not teach you something any more than an embrace teaches you something. Yet, an embrace can have a profound effect.

What you can learn is to prepare yourself in the best possible way to receive the gift hidden in the heart of meditation.

For many years I practised meditation the standard way: in the hour before going to sleep. About 10 years ago, so after 40 years of meditation, I changed my routine after reading an article about the sleep habits of people who live in remote Swiss mountain areas. In winter when the light fades quickly, they go to bed early, rise again at around 2 o’clock at night and do some woodcarving singing and other pleasant things. After two hours they would go to bed to enjoy some sleep…