The Trouble with Meditation When You Have Severe, Loud, Constant Tinnitus....

The trouble with meditation.

Those of us with severe tinnitus, loud and constant, can expect difficulty when practicing meditation.
In a quiet situation our tinnitus sounds even louder.
Is meditating even possible?
What should we expect from it?

Subsequent to one or two PM’s on this matter I thought I should try to explain why I practice it (daily) and what it does.

For me then:
I sit or lie down quietly.
I avoid focussing on the noise.
Eyes closed - lips closed - teeth apart - hanging jaw.
I ask my tummy to do the breathing for me.
I just observe my uncontrolled breathing.
It can do just as it likes.
Sometimes it pants - eventually it slows down to almost non existent.
Sometimes I repeat a mantra.
Deeper - deeper - deeper - deeper - with each out breath.
Usually I sense that my demeanour is calming down.
I find that I drift away to a place of safety
that I call - Stillness.
I am unaware of anything else.

If, by trial and error, you can come to experience ‘stillness’
I think it can benefit you very much.

(I know that for me, silence is impossible,
but ‘Stillness’ is achievable.)

Personally I find many of Eckhart Tolle’s suggestions helpful.
Please note that I did not say ‘all.’
We tend to spend most of our time ‘chewing over’ the past - particularly on injustices done to us.
This I understand very well indeed.
Essentially, the callous behaviour of one individual cost me the life I had, my silence, my jazz passion, my skill, my artistry, my income, my very health.
Some things that happen in life are simply unforgivable.
I do not acquiesce to forgiveness.
I am not Jesus Christ, nor a particular follower.
But I can choose not to spend too much time in actively hating - though it does come across me occasionally.
We are only human and with a strong sense of injustice, of course.
But essentially I suppose I practice letting go - I have better ways to spend my time.

Tolls says that we all spend so much of our precious time in both re-living the past, and fearing the future - rather than concentrating on today - the ‘Now’ as he puts it.
He is regarded by many as a spiritual teacher, a present day philosopher.

However, my own meditational practices predated my acquaintance with him, and do not depend on his theories.

Best wishes everybody
Dave xx
Jazzer