We often think that the way forward lies in us putting a lot of work into our life, hoping to improve and fix what we do not like. And we can bring that attitude to meditation also, seeing it as something I am doing, and something I have got to do. However, just as one of the big problems in meditation is that we can take ourselves too seriously, we also need to realize that a big step towards contentment lies in letting some things go or not holding on too tightly to the succession of energies that appear in the mind, both positive “improving” ones as well as the ones that are arise from difficult events or people. Now to say this sounds quite simple. But the tendency of the mind is to hold onto most things and make them into problems. We don’t have the faith or the trust or the willingness to just totally let go in the moment, to allow things pass through lightly, rather than amplifying them and making them into a story about our value or our life. Where meditation helps is in coming to see that the mind is continually generating stories and fears, and that holding one to every one can become quite tiring. Letting go our our inflated sense of the importance of our dramas can be liberating. The image in this poem may help – as a way of dealing with thoughts in meditation, as a way of dealing with our preoccupation with “me” and “I”, as a way of dealing with our tendency to improve and fix and fret.
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished into the world.
Mary Oliver, One or Two Things
Challenges develop fortitude and strength…One of the biggest problems for astronauts living in space is the loss of bone mass due to zero-gravity. With no gravity to resist the astronauts become weaker. In the biological big-bubble experiment known as Biosphere 2, the trees eventually had to be attached by cables to the framework above. This is because there was no wind in the Biosphere , and with nothing to resist the trees became weak and needed support. Similarly, without something to work against – without situations of some gravity – our body and mind begin to atrophy. We need something to press against in life in order to stay strong and grow.
Mindfulbalance 