Over the years I’ve tried many types of meditation. But I always come back to the same method. I call it The Third Eye technique.

Once I’ve settled quietly, perhaps having taken a few deep breaths to relax a little, I bring my awareness to the centre of my forehead, the spot between my eyes. Traditionally, this is where the Third – or spiritual – eye is located.

(Actually that particular spot is in line with the Pineal gland  which is located in the centre of the brain between the hemispheres, and its function is to help regulate sleep patterns.)

And then? Well, I know I’m not alone when I say that, no matter how hard I try, it seems a lot of the time nothing happens. Well, thoughts happen. Anxieties and memories intrude their pesky (and sometimes ugly) presence. So much for emptying the mind and having transcendental experiences.

Well, in fact despite evidence to the contrary, I – along with all of you who ‘try to meditate’ – do sometimes achieve a state of no thought, of total quiet. The problem is, of course, in a state where there is no thought it’s impossible to think: ‘Hey, I’m having no thoughts.’

As for the (rare) transcendent experience referred to: on those occasions something other than a thought, memory, anxiety, comes up; something that transcends those mundane ‘normal’ things.

See the tenderness. See the tenderness. See the tenderness.

These words seemed to come right after I’d thought for the millionth time ‘nothing’s happening’ while I tried to meditate one day a while ago.

Not spoken by a voice exactly, yet heard with my internal or mental ear. Clear and distinct; the same fully formed injunction repeated three times.

But, see the tenderness? I’m not sure where these words came from. The truth is I am a gentle person by nature; I am not naturally ‘tough’ or ‘aggressive’ or anything like that. But it’s also true that I’ve been all those things over long periods of my life. Nature vs nurture you see.

Anyway, what tenderness? Where? Does it refer to the tenderness that exists in the world?

Perhaps it’s to do with what I am supposed to be reading or otherwise taking in? Books, movies, and other story sources that speak of tender things and people?

Or might it be an injunction for me to redouble my efforts to turn away from the wold? To turn away from the horrors and the nastiness of Maya or the material and essentially illusory world?

And by this turning away from the world, perhaps tenderness is to be found and seen in a turning to the interior world, in the spaces of contemplation within Self.

This injunction (repeated emphatically three times. Sorry I already said that didn’t I?) does seem to have come from some part of my Self that longs for a gentler way to be, for a more tender way to relate to others and to Self.

Ideas and questions to contemplate and to reflect upon. Meanwhile, it’s a good start to know that even if my mind tells me otherwise, when I meditate, something is happening. Sometimes.

Peace