Skip to main content

Meditation

When the topic of meditation arises, I often hear, "I don't meditate", "I've never meditated", " I can't meditate"or "I AM a meditator" which often means, "I sit for x number of minutes every day which makes me subtly superior".  Once upon a time I meditated several hours a day, year after year, quietly sequestered from the hustle and bustle of the world.  Then something changed.  I asked what am I training for?

Meditation, as it's commonly referred to, is a practice composed of mental exercises and some degree of physical control, for the purpose of reaching a heightened state of awareness or a more relaxed condition.  It's easy to make meditation into a destination... an aspiration to attain some conceptual ideal or the means to get there.  Where?  I don't know…there?  Enlightenment? …some preferred future HERE? But meditation is a training tool and not a merit-based-goal earned through time spent sitting like a pretzel contemplating the belly button of the universe.
So what is all the training for?  Have you ever tumbled head over heart into natures beauty, astounded by the intricacies in each detail?  Have you ever laid awake beside your lover and watched the gentle rise and fall of his or her breath?  Have you held a new born baby in your arms and taken in the fresh newness of life with every sense at your disposal? Or become lost in the act of writing, creating, playing, loving and more?
These are all forms of meditation.  Formal meditation practice is meant to strengthen our muscle to be present. It's like learning to play the piano, we practice regularly to improve our playing. The play may be more formal and systematic BUT it's still playing the piano.  The same is true of formal meditation.  We are practicing conscious engagement with life AS IT IS right now.  If the internal landscape is bumpy, we are present and aware of the quality of bumpiness.  If it's blissful and spacious, there is a YES and release into that. Meditation is a no-fail business.  You are just showing up.  When resistance to this moment diminishes, so does the internal noise.  It's not a goal.  It's the natural byproduct of presence.  All the observed benefits of meditation naturally flow from a YES to this moment, as it is and exactly as you are.
And like all practice, meditation IS strengthening our capacity for YES.  After years seated cross-legged and contemplating my navel from every mystical tradition available, I asked the question… What is all of this training for?  And the answer came.  Life.  Living. And the secret of life is... to live it! 100%.  And that YES makes all the difference.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...
4 comments
Read more