Sung-mook Kim/College student
I really hated calamari when I was young. I didn’t like its texture, smell or taste. My mom used to often make a side dish with calamari because we lived near the seaport, and I would get mad at my mom for doing that. My mom used to say that I had to stop being picky, but I still didn’t like the calamari. I thought that it was simply just my preference.
Since I met this meditation, I started to have a confidence that I am able to discard any prejudice in my mind.
One day, my mom encouraged me to join the meditation boot camp. I attended, and when we got to the practice of throwing away things that we didn’t like, I thought of calamari. Then I decided to find out why I disliked the calamari so much.
I brought up all the pictures of my memories of calamari since I was young. And I brought up a picture of one of the cartoons where the scary calamari was the villain. This calamari villain ate people and looked disgusting. After watching that, I didn’t want to see any more calamari. It seemed so silly but I had a deep trauma about calamari.
I finally realized that was the reason why I hated calamari. Because of a picture I took about calamari in my mind, I started to hate it. Since I found the reason, I decided to throw that mind away. I kept throwing away those calamari villain scenes until I got over my trauma. After meditating about that, I started to be fine with calamari. And I was even able to eat calamari fries, calamari teriyaki, and so on. Actually, I realized that calamari is delicious. Now I can feel freed from any trauma and I feel so happy and comfortable all the time. I am not afraid of anything anymore since I have learned how to throw away that false mind.
Source: www.meditationlife.org
