The thing about meditation practice is that it can bring you into presence, whether that's being present with yourself, with another, with your surroundings; with the sacred or divine, or the unified whole. Better still, all of those.
In the meditation I've undertaken for more than 40 years now, primarily rooted in Zen (the original mindfulness practice), being still and UNfocused in your focusedness is key.
We simply stop, breathe, stay present to what is.
Part of this practice is monitoring the transient thoughts and feelings that flow through us like water and letting them simply pass on through. My Jungian work, and that of the nature-orientation of my druidic path, also remind me that I don't need to identify with this cluster of reactions and experiences driven by the separatist ego, but can choose to observe and register the whole of what's happening in our huge interconnected family of 'all that is', to the extent that my limited perceptions allow.
So what meditation does is to open up a space, a pause, in which the essential weightlessness, the trivial insubstantiality of things like emotional reactivity, becomes apparent. If it's transient, why bother to waste precious energy on defending the ego's whining?
Of course, that's easy to say. None of us transcends very easily the emotional, desire-and-opinion-driven aspects of the ego that orientate us to and in our daily lives. However, they can become simply small and relatively unimportant drivers of our way of being. (At least, that's part of the ideal.) It helps curb my impulsiveness (in a good way).
Every moment is an opportunity to practise whether to react, or to choose to respond. Recently a friend delivered a blast of excessive anger at me. I was shocked and deeply hurt – the more so because I hadn't done what I was being accused of having done. (If I had, her anger would have been justified.)
I'm perfectly capable of doing the same thing – aren't we all. But it is easier now (and so it should be after 45 years!) simply to notice how much I wanted to hurt her back, how angry I felt at her accusation; and to choose to pause for long enough as to see the bigger picture of her own hurting. She is enmeshed in a difficult situation in her life and I understood where her anger was coming from: she'd convinced herself of the truth of an assumption she'd made and had gone off on one, hitting out, rather than exploring the more obvious, accurate and non-blaming possibility that it was nothing to do with me.
I'm not meaning to sound sanctimonious. How often I too get caught up in reactivity. All I'm meaning to say is that even curbing one unskillful impulse of mine in the face of personal emotional pressure to 'get even' in some way felt like a small step towards bigger peace.
It's simple.
Stopping.
Breathing.
Counting to ten (how wise that old advice is).
Bringing yourself back to the present moment for a moment, or a minute, or ten, in its perfectly neutral and perfectly beautiful natural state as it is, no matter what else is happening.
Choosing to respond.
FROM MIRIAM:
ReplyDeleteI can never hear what you say without thinking, yes, I need to be reminded of all this, especially when feeling unjustly 'attacked' by someone else who, as you say, if you stop to think, is in a more difficult place than I am.
This came to me during a short course in meditation given by an inspiring woman from the Buddhist community at Conishead Priory In Ulverston.
She talked of loving your enemy and what came from it was a revelation with great relief. At last I would be able to relate more easily to a difficult colleague at work.
But I still had difficulty meditating. More recently, when stressed, I find myself coming closer to it. I stop and breath then find my gaze fixed on something nearby: eg a pattern in a curtain or rug. I’m aware of sensing things around me but as I’m fixed, my head is emptied of distressing thoughts. I’m aware of being in what might feel like a trance. Or am I just hoping it is? It is a good feeling though.
Thank you for your comment, Miri. I've heard great things about Coniston Priory, though I haven't attended myself.
ReplyDeleteAh that single-pointed focus, when it happens, is great, isn't it? And then you become aware of it and it slips away...!
Wouldn't it be great if we could move beyond the whole idea of enemies? I think of Henry Beston's words in relation to animals, about their struggles and travails in the net of time alongside us, and think that if we truly saw ourselves as part of the web alongside every other sentient being there'd be so much less trouble in the world. Then I think of Plato's words: 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a had battle'.
One of the most useful pieces of advice I've come across is in (I think, from memory) Don Miguel Ruiz's 'The Four Agreements', in which he reminds us that people's reactions are not to do with us but to do with them. As an ex social worker you'll remember the power in simply handing back other people's stuff to them.
And of course all this is easy to say!