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This post is being made the day after the meditation occurred.

Before the meditation, I had been working on homework. I decided to meditate once I finished my math homework. Overall, I felt pretty good. I had began to condition for track and had sore muscles from mid-distance indoor track runs. While my body was aching (lower body from exercise the day of the meditation, upper body from the day prior), my mind felt fine.

I sat gingerly in the dark on my bedroom floor, avoiding causing my muscles pain. I assumed the lotus position with my back straight and, as usual, I relaxed my body after a period of time (maybe half way through). I measured my heart rate before meditation to be 77 bpm and then I closed my eyes. I focused on my aching muscles, taking in the feeling. I then tried advancing myself through the stages of meditation as described by Mr. Dean. However, I didn't make much progress. I felt myself wavering between stages, sometimes in stage 3 (daydreaming/ideas) while sometimes going all the way down to stage 1 (noticing the body). I meditated for a total of 24 minutes, from 9:27 to 9:51 PM. Throughout the entire time, I felt like I was on a roller coaster, going up and down. I felt like I was grabbing a warm stick of butter: the harder I grabbed on, the more likely it was to go flying away.

     When I finished my meditation, I opened my eyes and set a timer to 1 minute to find my heart rate. When the timer went off, I determined it was 74 bpm, about a 3.9% decrease from before. It wasn't much, but it was something. I generally have a high heart rate, especially for a runner. I've talked with other cardio athletes who say they are from 40 to 50 bpm resting. Now, I'm not conditioned cardiovascularly at the moment, but even when I'm at rest during running season, my heart rate is generally from 60 to 70 bpm. I know it isn't genetic because my older brother was much lower when he was in high school.
     Looking back at my meditation experience, I realize that what was keeping me from remaining steadily in stage 3 (and possibly moving on from there) was my effort to control the moment. I wanted to observe the moment, but I kept pushing forward, trying to force myself to go forward in the stages. Next time, I will recognize that I will naturally transcend from the stage and that I should not push myself along in meditation. While it was not the best experience, I still felt like I received some benefits from it aside from learning what I did wrong.
      When I went to bed around midnight, I felt fine. However, later that night, I experienced disturbing dreams. The first one started off with me talking to a girl. She was very attractive (you know who she is, Rahul), but she was talking with her friend about how they smashed Torahs at their summer camp (I think it may have been a bible camp, because I know that they were Christian. This was in no way an anti-Christian dream, it was coincidence that they were Christian). When they said that that's what they did, they looked over at me as if they were trying to not offend or upset me. I could see from the strain in their faces that they had realized that they had already offended me. They tried detaching themselves from the act, explaining that they did it for their forefathers. I attempted to be calm and said "You know, that could be very offensive to some people... like me." Now, for those of you who are not Jewish, the smashing of Torahs may not seem like something that would be disturbing. But to me, it is one of the most horrific thoughts I have ever had. Imagining the holy scroll, once exalted high on the bima (elevated platform in a synagogue where the Rabbi stands and where the Torah is read), being thrust with hatred toward the crippling ground is enough to make me feel sick. Such acts against Judaism appear to me as just below the Holocaust, showing similar disgust toward a group based solely on their identity and beliefs. The thought alone is enough to instantly empty my heart of joy. It is an incredible display of antisemitism, showing the savage rage that hatred can breed. For me, the thought is near the epitome of hatred. It's disgusting, making me feel as if I have a hole in my heart. Honestly, I don't feel capable of explaining it to the extent which it deserves. In addition to this, I had nebulous dreams that followed featuring me being ignored by the same people for no apparent reason. When I woke up, I had to tell myself that they had only been dreams. They have been realities at different times in the past, but for me at that moment, they were only dreams....