Tag: Meditation

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To See What’s Here

My throat is easy. Cool air falls inside, fills me, then expels. My arms and neck begin to relax just from noticing the sticky points. I am sitting with no other purpose than to see what’s here, to feel the shape of my body as it meets the shape of a living moment. I feel my clothes, my feet. I feel a flake of dust in my nose.

I remember sitting at a retreat years ago in a tired building, dust on the curtains and the sills, dust floating in the light from the window, beautiful but musty. My nose itched, and I was afraid I would sneeze, violating the silence, a bother to everyone around me. How embarrassing for the newbie.

I realize my mind has wandered. I bring it back. Watching my breath, I’m struck by how physical the air feels as it slides along the physical passage of my throat and lungs, a moving volume with substance, brushing against my own substance, my body more real, overly real, because I am aware of the movement. In truth, this is just my body as it always is, but it is a physicalness I usually ignore. To pause and soak it in by concentrating my attention is hypnotizing.

How would I describe this hyper-physicalness? Who would be interested? There is a friend I know who would enjoy the conversation. We would talk about the newness, the freshness, the way our bodies become more alive when we take the time to feel them. We share words, descriptions, an eager back and forth, a conversation about the body that makes me forget my body.

I realize I have wandered again. I come back from the conversation that never happened, all imagined cinema. It appeared real while I was in it, but when I stepped out, it collapsed. The contrast is startling, between the movie in my mind, flat and weightless, and the vibrant fullness of my body when awareness is present. I return to the warmth and weight of my body. I feel my lungs mingling particles of me with the cool air, creating each new breath, alive for a moment and then passed on. The words and descriptions in the movie are still here, floating like dust in the sunlight, but they no longer compel my attention. Even the words I am writing now seem removed, hanging in the background. Awareness has absorbed me – grounded, palpable, vivid. A feeling of pure presence fills my body and the space around my body, expanding outward, brimming, boundary-less. My body is still. My mind is still. The volume, still.

I feel an icy pinprick. My throat catches, my blood runs quick. Something is afraid, a piece deep within me shouts a warning to pull back before I am lost in this uncontained spaciousness. I am confused. The expanding volume is peaceful, blissful, but unfamiliar, and the fearful piece has been trained to treat anything foreign as a danger. I stay. I watch the confusion, I feel the fear, I let it grow. I expect a firebomb, but it pops like a firecracker and is gone.

The volume settles back. I invite the fearful piece inside, she needs attention. I sit with everything – the peace, the weight, the fear, the physical intimacy, the breath that seems to occupy the fullness of it all. Time moves unsped, as if through water. I feel no need to strive, to bring about something different. I am suspended in direct experience, unfiltered, conscious.

It is a morning, like other mornings. When I get up to go about my day, this heightened perception will linger. Tomorrow will be different. I will sit again with no other purpose than to see what’s here.

Photo by Rona Lao on Unsplash

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The Two Roots – Awareness and Love

The physical world rests upon a substrate, base components at the fundamental layer of existence. Electrons, protons, and neutrons swirl in a dance of atoms, combining to make hydrogen, helium, carbon, oxygen, iron, water, air, soil, and everything else. All that we can see or touch derives from these basic building blocks.

The metaphysical world rests upon a substrate too. At the fundamental layer are the irreducible forces of awareness and love, the base components from which everything derives. All that we can hope for in a spiritual life sprouts from this double helix.

Appearance, sensation, perception, attention, thought, reflection, insight, ideas – none of these are possible without the faculty of awareness. Its absence cannot even be described as a dark void, because darkness and emptiness can be sensed, and without sentience, there is nothing. Simply and completely nothing. Awareness makes the vibrancy of life accessible.

Empathy, compassion, affection, friendship, fellowship, community, generosity, mercy, union – these are the shades of love that give meaning to what arises in awareness; its absence would reduce sentience to the dry and motionless act of observance. Love makes the experience of life worthwhile.

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The Field

My single greatest tool for spiritual growth frightens me. A small, stricken part of me works hard to avoid it.

There is a space I can get to – not always, but often – an interior realm where my perceptions and memories and image of self alter into a different, expanded reality. It is more than quiet, more than mindful, though silence and mindfulness are present. I become aware of the volume of space within my body, sensing the surge of motion within and between my head, hips, and torso. I am paying attention to my inside the way I normally pay attention to the outside. The feeling is intimate, textured; subtle movements of energy reveal layers, opening more the longer I stay. The entire picture is realer than real should be able to be.

I hear my breathing from the inside, nearly silent, the silence weighted at the front of my chest, moving slowly like a velvet tide, moving up, moving down. Stillness below, and overhead, stillness out to the horizon. Time fills out, comes to rest. The hidden space within my thinking lengthens, limber, fluid. Having lost their compelling logic, my thoughts slow, as if moving through water, moving through the viscosity I imagine at the bottom of a deep lake. There is no urgency to act or decide or interpret or choose; there is only listening and readiness and potential. From here, it can open into anything.

This is what remains when I surrender, when the old constructs that held my image of me no longer have their glue. A familiar newness comes when I am no longer holding on. It is the blessing of relinquishment. When I allow myself to enter fully, I know that I am held; the space has weight, the weight of safety, of love. I am sustained and enriched. I have entered The Field, the ground where everything connects. It is delicious.

When there, I am removed enough from ordinary reality to observe its frantic, pressing needs from a distance. Why not stay here? Isn’t this where I’ve wanted to arrive? Why let myself be beckoned by a sound or anxious flicker and forced back into this smaller, constricted container? I don’t fully know the answer to that question. For me, at this stage in my growth, this contemplative state is a way station, a respite, not a place I can permanently reside.

But upon each return to ordinary reality, I take note of what brought me back. It is often a fear that wants to be seen, wants to be integrated. The fear is always part of an old pattern I have built over time, an armor against the arrows of life. My old patterns don’t like to surrender, which feels like a kind of death. I feel a twinge of guilt, as if these fears are holding me back.

Not true. This is the process, this is the journey. My task is to welcome each piece of me that arises in fear and bring it to The Field. Again, and again, and again, as often as required, so that being in deep contemplative space does not only nourish, it heals.

Photo by Getty Images on Unsplash

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The Channel of Your Life

“Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.”

Henry David Thoreau

What is Thoreau talking about? Where else could I be? Aren’t I always in the channel of my life?

Sadly, no. I am often pulled away by the pressures of the moment, the expectations of others, or even my own fear of facing the totality of who I am. Thoreau knew that the noise of the world can distract and overwhelm and that without a conscious return to the channel, we are set adrift.

The channel Thoreau describes is the true me, the essence beneath the fickle appearance at the surface. When I rest in the channel of my life, things flow. I align with an inner compass of values, passion, and purpose that guides my actions. The signal of my inner compass is strong but quiet, humming at a low vibration. Unless I pause to listen, it is easy to float with the tide and pass it by.

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Mornings Like This

I feel soft from the inside out. My bones are settled just where they want to be. The weight of my body is floating. There is an unfamiliar sensation in my jaw that I think they call “unclenched.” I can feel the fat of my eyebrows, the smoothness of my face, the backs of my hands. My interior volume is full, anchored, gently curving as I breathe. I sense the space beyond my skin, my boundaries insubstantial, the pulse of aliveness humming.

It’s been one of those mornings when my meditation drops me into an open field where my physical body meets the shape of my soul. Rigidity recedes, and what remains is fluid space that contains its own solidity. My perception alters, and I glimpse what the sages have been pointing to:  I sense my connection with the earth, with all beings, with Source; I feel my true nature as kindness and mercy; I realize I am loved (flawed as I am), complete, and whole.

I like this experience, and I admit, I want to hold on to it. I love the personal benefits of a spiritual practice:  the glowing feelings of contentment and serenity, and the intuition that, despite all the turmoil in the world, things will come around right in the end. I also love the dimension beyond the personal, the cord that runs through time and ties me to All-That-Is.  

I know that this altered sense will fade in a short while. I will become impatient with traffic or petty about an argument. The warmth and connection that feel so vivid now will evaporate, the window will constrict. Small forgotten muscles will knot themselves back together, and I will assume that tension and brittleness are normal.

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The Promise of Practice

The Proven Value of Contemplative Practice

My day is full. And so is my mind.

I’m occupied with tasks, activities, frustrations, conversations, appointments, phone calls, and all the thoughts, feelings, speculations, and memories that come along for the ride. I handle these with a normal, everyday level of awareness that seems to do just fine. But the pressured pace of skimming from item to item can leave me feeling scattered and brittle.  

A contemplative practice offers me a chance to step off the hamster wheel, reflect, and build capacities that reconnect me to the depth of who I am and what I care about.

There are proven benefits to slowing down and learning to direct and sustain my attention. The list of enduring traits linked to a regular meditation practice include lower blood pressure, decreased inflammation, a healthier immune response, optimized telomere function (which slows aging), a stronger ability to focus, less reactivity, reduced anxiety and depression, more empathy for others, and an increased sense of well-being. Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson review this remarkable body of research in their book, “Altered States, Altered Traits.”

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Wise Words – Enlightenment Happens by Accident

 “Enlightenment happens by accident. Practice makes you accident-prone.”

Robert Aitken*

There is a natural paradox stitched into the fabric of spiritual practice – it requires both effort and non-effort.

We have “goals” on the spiritual path, but we hold them loosely. We want to be more conscious, enlightened, and open to the sacred experiences that crack the facade of our outer shell, but we know these can’t be reached by willful pursuit. The achievement-oriented skills we’ve learned to use in the outer world don’t work in the inner world. Trying harder makes us, well, hardened, and less open to receiving. Holding the reins too tightly keeps the horse from moving freely.

Our awakening comes in spurts, unexpected flashes sprinkled over time. By accident, so to speak. Spiritual growth is not a linear process. It is subject to our care but not our control. It’s more like preparing a field and waiting to see what sprouts. Things progress below the surface if we cultivate an openness to spontaneity, a receptivity and close listening that allow the alchemy to work at its own pace.

And, on the other hand …

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I’m Not a Very Good Mystic

I’m not a very good mystic.

I spend most of my time absorbed by the tasks and routines of the day. I would call this my ordinary state of consciousness, where I am focused on my perspective as an individual, moving through the world as a separate being. Periodically, something shifts my state. It could be a passage I read, even a single word, like “grace” or “love.” It could be a comment I overhear about someone’s troubles, or a patch of color that catches my eye from a flower bed or a shaft of light.

In these small moments, I shift into an expanded consciousness. My senses widen and I drop into a more vibrant world. I feel the current of life pass through me as everything becomes unreasonably simple and clear, and I remember I am part of something larger. The shift sometimes feels abrupt, leaving me amazed at how I could have been satisfied with the shallow perception that filled my attention just a moment ago. I wonder, “How could I ever leave this more expanded, peaceful, connected space?”

But leave it I do. I am usually pulled back into ordinary reality fairly quickly.

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It’s the Small Things That Support a Steady Practice          

There’s a funny thing that happens when I sit to meditate. 

All by themselves, my hands find a familiar spot at my waist, one atop the other, turned upward like an open cup, middle fingers nested together at the first knuckle, the tips of my thumbs barely touching, as if they could lightly hold a piece of paper.

I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind when I started to meditate years ago, and that was how Shunryu Suzuki said to place your hands. Now, my hands take this position automatically, almost unnoticed. When I sit, this habit sets a quiet mood. Subtle signals to my brain remind me to relax and open.

This is one of the quiet advantages of keeping a routine in our practice. Our minds like the familiarity of patterns and will draw cues from repetition. Small routines work better than willpower in maintaining a spiritual practice. Setting up an environment that nudges our behavior is more effective than grit.

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The One Thing That Starts My Day on the Right Foot

Like most people, my day is a patchwork of multiple and conflicting desires. I want to have a vibrant spiritual life, but I want other things too:  I want to care for my family, I want to spend time with friends, I want to respond to my work and professional obligations, I want time to read.

Truth be told, I also want to eat chocolate, snack on peanuts, take naps and relax in front of the television (just for fun, not always something artsy or profound). In addition, I need to contend with the daily chores of life that support all the rest.

I’m busy. And it’s easy to get caught up in the small details of the day. So how do I make time in my schedule for the things that enliven my spiritual life?  A key element is having a consistent structure for how the day begins. It does not have to be elaborate or time consuming, you can start with ten minutes and if you find it useful, build up from there. I know that for me, the first activities I do after waking set the lens for the whole day. Let me share some ideas with you here.

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