Meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment.
It’s not about getting somewhere else, but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, there you are
We do not need some ideal or romantic fairy tale of what would be best for us.
What we need most is what is already given to us: the actuality of things as they are in the only moment we will ever have – this one.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners.
Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake
to the unique beauty and possibilities
of each present moment as it unfolds.
Jon Kabat Zinn
We get a lot of opportunities in our lives to practice with difficult events we do not understand or experiences that we do not know how they will turn out in the end. So there is a constant dialogue between emptiness and form, with the mind preferring to have definite form most times. We like to be able to give things a definite name, even, paradoxically, preferring to put words like “I’m falling apart” on an experience of confusion or doubt, rather than leave it as an unpleasant feeling. We quickly like to compare experiences with words like “not as good as”, or “went really well” becoming fixed early or immediately after some event. The problem with this is that the mind tends to solidify around the naming and fix the experience there, even though its full meaning has not yet come to light. So there is a wisdom in not naming, in being able to hold a space around an experience which in ongoing. The main ongoing skill in mindfulness practice , which we return to over and over again, is being present in the present moment. We are between what has happened ( which is now a memory, but may be quite active in our emotions and fears, influencing our naming) and what could happen (which is at this moment just a thought). We are in the present, which is really the only time there is. We try to ground our whole sense of balance there, instead of creating fears and what-if’s in our rush to have meaning. Everything else is uncertain.
In-between is where humans always are,
that’s what we have to welcome,
a story with an uncertain ending.
And this condition is interesting if you inhabit it;
it’s alive.
If I’m facing something that I don’t know what to do,
the “not knowing” is what is true,
and the resources that I have,
deeply ignorant that I am,
will have to be enough.
John Tarrant
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
John O’Donohue, A Morning Offering
What I most want is to spring out of this personality, then to sit apart from that leaping. I’ve lived too long where I can be reached. RumiOur lives are often like over-packed suitcases. It seems like we are always busy, always over-pressured, always one phone call, one text message, one email, one visit, and one task behind. We are forever anxious about what we have still left undone, about whom we have disappointed, about unmet expectations. Moreover, inside of all of that, we can forever be reached. We have no quiet island to escape to, no haven of solitude. We can always be reached. Half the world has our contact numbers and we feel pressure to be available all the time. So we often feel as if we are on a treadmill from which we would want to step off. And within all that busyness, pressure, noise, and tiredness we long for solitude, long for some quiet, peaceful island where all the pressure and noise will stop and we can sit in simple rest. That’s a healthy yearning. It’s our soul speaking. Like our bodies, our souls too keep trying to tell us what they need.
[But]…Solitude is not something we turn on like a water faucet. It needs a body and mind slowed down enough to be attentive to the present moment. We are in solitude when….we fully taste the water we are drinking, feel the warmth of our blankets, and are restful enough to be content inside our own skin. We don’t often accomplish this, despite sincere effort, but we need to keep making new beginnings.
Ron Rolheiser, Longing For Solitude
