Re: VOM and Center of Stillness Meditation?

["Martin" <martincosgrove@...>]

>> Have you tried simply letting go of thinking?<<

Rawn, thanks a lot for your reply. The funniest thing happened when 
I read your message. My first 'gut' instinct was to think 'well, of 
course I've TRIED, that's the whole point, but it's not that easy'. 
Then after a few seconds a voice in my head told me to stop being 
critical; that the guy knows what he is talking about and wrote what 
he wrote for a reason. Then (and this is the part I am still having 
trouble believing), it was as if a switch was turned on (or off) in 
my head and there and then, as I sat in front of the computer, I saw 
beyond your words, the essential meaning I suppose, and I found 
myself falling into a meditative state effortlessly and for 13 
minutes I experienced a vacancy of mind; well actually, there were 
several small stray thoughts, but it was a huge leap from my past 
experiences which never lasted for more than a minute. At one point 
I felt as if my awareness was expanding, quite literally... that's 
one aspect of it that I don't think I would be able to put into 
words.... 

That was yesterday. Today I listened to your CSM recording which I 
downloaded yesterday (and thank you very much for your kind offer of 
sending me the CD, but my dial up connection was having a good day 
yesterday and it didn't take too long to download). The meditation 
is great, it really helped me to relax in a way I hadn't before with 
other forms of meditation, and I believe it helped to strengthen the 
vacancy of mind. I still need to work with the VOM exercise more 
before I would feel happy moving on to the next step, but at least 
now I feel I have something I can work towards.

I would highly recommend the Center of Stillness Meditation to 
anyone working on Step One (and probably the other steps, but I have 
no experience of those yet!) - it's something I intend to continue 
working with as a 'lead up' to my vacancy of mind meditation.

So, Rawn, thank you again for taking the time to prepare all of your 
wonderful recordings and all of the other useful material available 
on your site (I can think of one or two people who may be fuming 
now, but I personally can see nothing wrong with expressing your 
appreciation to someone who takes the time out to answer your 
questions as thoughtfully as Rawn does.)

Take care,

Martin