Meditation Experiences, Remembering Mother

 18th September is my mother's birthday, rest her soul, 8 years now or 7 I think. Days ending in 8 I find auspicious for spiritual practice. Having a couple weeks off from the job and going nowhere I am quite relaxed. I meditate fr 30 minutes after waking. Today was an interesting experience for chakra balancing as I felt them all about equally instead of say my heart chakra being very strong. as usual where I cross my arms over my chest. It is good to have balance. Sadness or joy is usually perceived as more or less energy somewhere, like in the heart, so it is good to feel everywhere about the same, limiting the ups and downs of life, increasing resilience. Like in relationship ups and downs which depend on personality profiles of individuals. Two people fit together like pieces of a puzzle. If you change your personality or get more flexible then you can expand your range within the relationship so that it is much better or generally expand ranges of friendships, relationships. So spiritual practice is like sport, but internal. To try to maintain some state, say a good mood, like in a certain state of meditation, the perfect sexual high, a concert high with tears in your eyes, that perfect stillness on the lakeside at sunset is futile. Why do we enjoy weekends or vacation? Because they are the exception. Suffering, grudgework is the rule. Permanent happiness is unsatisfactory. It is the proportion that counts like in marriage. So much % argument contra so much % agreeableness or divorce follows. 

As regards downs in spiritual practice and moods, I presume that is the prep work for a breakthrough to a higher plateau of happiness. No pain, no gain. Maybe this runs for many lives till we figure it all out. We get stuck in certain situations we thought would be desirable but after a while become dull. Death, rebirth, new career, sex life. I have been thinking spirituality gets us past some of that simple materialism so typical in the modern times. The industrial revolution ran parallel to the 20 year Saturn/Jupiter cycle always in earth signs 200 years long. We were focused on sciences, finances, concrete results. Since 2 years that has switched to air signs. The focus of society is changing from wealth, facts, industry to humanity, society.  We must get along, not just accumulate. America had its rise in these last two centuries, a virgin continent of resources to exploit. Now this system is sputtering. Technological progress, linear, is limited.  So we focus on inner life. Back to basics as in Asia. Thousands of years of navel gazing a Westerner would say. But every empire built huge monuments, had great conquests and perished in its turn. Each person has the same in succesive lives. One talks of a spiral evolution. Perhaps it is so.