After a meditation he would listen as I shared what happened. He would ask questions. His encouragement helped me to trust the experience. Over time, he would pull out little nuggets from the experience and be delighted in my achievement.
For example, I would say something like "the name of Bridget popped in my mind during the meditation" and he would be thrilled! His encouragement motivated me to continue and each time I would bring back more little gems of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. His process to focus on the experience, share the experience with him, and then know I could trust the thoughts and images helped encourage me. It gave me confidence. It motivated me. His ability to listen and offer possible explanations as to what happened helped guide me down this road. I soon was building and expanding on my experiences and developing new abilities.
We started off with a very basic meditation then tried various other types of meditations, such as discovery meditations, sound, color, as well as different positions. Each had a different focus and often led to different results.
I am now taking a formal meditation class and it interesting to compare the differences in teaching style of these two training experiences. This formal meditation class has a focus on technique and following the rules. The instructor walks around the class and corrects the placement of our hands, our posture, or how we are breathing. We are learning what not to do and what he accepts on our form. We are learning to follow the rules.
I have noticed we are missing the point of the inward experience. We focus on technique.
John U.K.'s teaching style was to focus on what happened during the meditation rather than on technique and form. His teaching style helped me trust my feelings and thoughts during a meditation. In his teaching style he also would listen and provide encouragement. He asked questions to help pull out little things I thought were unimportant in the meditation experience, and through this, he helped me to learn how to expand what I focused on within the meditation. His teaching style helped keep me motivated to continue down this new road.
Meditation training should not just be about form and technique. Meditation is about the inward experience. As a result, meditation training should be on the inward journey, too. The outward appearance is just form; it is not substance.
