Open That Love~Window!

When I was a little girl in that developmental stage between highchair and big person chair, my mother would place our 4~inch thick big~city phone book on a grown~up seat and help me climb aboard. I saw this scene repeated with my younger siblings at dinner tables spanning years. The ritual usually ended with a statement something like, “Now, let’s move that chair in so you’ll be in the same county as your food.”

That line returns to me now as I think back on my brisk walk around the lake this morning. I was moving within a crescent of mountains, beneath a huge, shockingly blue sky, the sun low in front of me. Too bad I wasn’t there.

My body may have been walking within beauty, but my thoughts were some place else. Likely I was thinking back on an interesting conversation, or scheduling my day, or simply drifting from one random thought to the next. But I definitely wasn’t fully on that lakeside path. To paraphrase Mom, I wasn’t in the same county as my nourishment.

A week earlier, I’d attended a performance by musicians Jenny Bird and Michael Mandrell. One of the songs of that evening popped into my head this morning and helped return me to the lake. In Some Kiss We Want, Jenny put to music the Rumi poem of the same name.

There is some kiss we want

with our whole lives,

the touch of spirit

on the body.

At night, I open the window

and ask the moon to come

and press its face against mine.

Breathe into me.

Close the language~door

and open the love~window.

The moon won't use the door,

only the window.

Sound advice, I thought. So with Rumi and Jenny as my guides, I once again closed the language~door. I let go my thoughts and opened my heart, my very own love~window.

And I woke to what was...Early morning light dancing on ripples of water churned by a soft breeze which riffled, too, my hair...Glorious blue of a sky found only at high altitudes, streaked with the feathery remains of a plane’s vapor trail mingling with a bevy of cirrus clouds...Solid earth beneath my feet, and delight in a body that brings the capacity to perceive such beauty.

And just then, a Great Blue Heron, hidden behind a rocky outcropping nearby, took flight. Broad wings beat a leisurely but powerful rhythm, lifting a body wrapped in blue~grey feathers, long stick legs trailing behind, orange in the morning light.

Having been alive to the experience, I saw and felt it all.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with language or the thinking of thoughts Rumi was referring to in his poem. But thoughts unchecked can whisk us away. And words, as much as I love them, are not real. They give us only an approximation of reality, merely pointing us in a certain direction. As the Buddha would say, words are the finger pointing to the moon. They are not the moon itself.

And it’s the moon we long for.

Rumi’s words, imprinted in my mind by Jenny’s marvelous voice, pointed me to the moment. I needed only to take the next step. When I opened that love~ window, the moon~~and the lake, the sky, and that magnificent heron~~ breathed into me.

What joy! A joy that urges me to remain in the same county as my nourishment, throughout all the moments of all my days.

Blessings on your very own love~window. May it open wide!

Loanne Marie

To learn more about Jenny Bird's music, go to her site jennybird.com. And here's the link to the Mystic Muse CD, which includes the Rumi song above and quotes put to music from other mystics and visionaries. You can listen to St. John for free!

Meditation Myths and Half Truths #2

Myth #2: Meditation is for patient people only.

Not true! Patience is not a prerequisite. Most committed meditators have logged in many hours of impatience and restlessness--have become convinced their timer has malfunctioned or they’d forgotten to set it; have taken a break ‘just for a second’ to jot down an earthshaking insight or deal with a VERY IMPORTANT task; have answered the phone because it might be something urgent; have gotten up to put the cat out, let the cat in, check to see if perhaps the cat might be thinking of going out--whatever! Sitting still--minute after minute after minute--is enough to make anyone buggy at times.

With steady practice, though, one learns the ploys of a restless spirit and becomes less apt to snatch the bait. Gradually, one learns to rest within the stillness, even to rest beneath the agitation.

And so this myth does contain a truth. One needs to be patient with the overall process. Remember, this is a relationship like any other--the relationship between you and your meditation practice, between you and Spirit. It will take a while to recognize, and learn how to effectively cope with, the various strategies of a rambunctious disposition.

What’s important is having a method to work with impatience. In an earlier post, Myths #1, March 3rd, 2008, I discussed helpful ways to conceive of a meandering mind. Since restlessness is to the emotions what a wandering mind is to the intellect, the view I shared in that essay will work here as well, and I refer you back to it. To see your impatience as an expression of the ceaselessly creative universal force may help you be, well, more patient with your impatience. Gentler. Restlessness really is just the stuff of being human.

But other than having a helpful way of conceptualizing such basic human traits, what can you do? The first task is to pull back from judging. Truly, what would make you conclude you should not be impatient? Assuming you were raised in mainstream Western culture, you have had little encouragement to be still. Everything is fast-paced and oh, so busy. Stimulation abounds. Never a dull moment. Until you sit down to meditate, that is.

So, an individual who has been surrounded by busyness, infused with busyness, sits down for half an hour to meditate. How do you suppose such a person will react? If your answer is that they’d be delighted as the silence stretched out ad infinitum, you’d likely be wrong!

We human beings are quite the hoot. We seem to assume that whatever struggle we’re having is some sort of aberration, and that the rest of the human race sails through such waters with hardly a ripple. Even when we know better intellectually, we still respond as though we’re defective.

And if you give that tendency full sway, you will expand a smallish difficulty into a big ISSUE. You will not only feel impatient, but will feel inferior about feeling impatient! At the very least you’ll feel impatient with your impatience! And then, well, you might as well give up meditation all together because why bother, you’re hopeless! Obviously, not a helpful process!

But lets say, just for argument’s sake, that you are particularly impatient, more so than most. So what?!! One thing about sitting in silence is that it will likely bring up whatever entanglements you have. That very patient person you know? Sit him in silence for an extended period of time, day after day, and his issues, whatever they might be, will rise to the surface just as certainly as do yours. If you already know your challenge is impatience, congratulations! You’re just that much farther along.

Don’t turn this proclivity into something so big you’ll sabotage the whole endeavor. When we clamp down on a tendency such as this, we concretize it. What could have been a momentary, passing impatience becomes something we KNOW about ourselves, now and for all time. Instead of feeling fidgety at a particular moment, you may begin to view yourself as AN IMPATIENT PERSON. Case closed. Obviously, this is not true. Even someone with more than their share of impatience is not impatient every moment of every day. Repeatedly reinforcing a stereotype will give it so much more power, and will make it more difficult to see yourself with all your gradations, nuance, and rich textures.

So, now that we’ve cut this predilection down to size, what can you do about it? There are several techniques you might find helpful. And these can be applied to a wandering mind as well.

~~You can simply note the impatience and return to a concentrative technique--focusing on the rise and fall of your chest, counting each breath, repeating a mantra, etc. This method assumes that, in that moment and over time, withdrawing your precious energy will dissipate whatever emotional reaction you’re having. As often as it arises, just that often can you decide not to feed it, choose to disengage.

~~You can simply watch the impatience, noting where it’s centered in your body, it’s quality, its moment to moment alterations. Neither jumping in nor moving away, you let it be. Most often, something will change. Thoughts, feelings, and reactions tend to be quite fluid, seldom remaining the same for long. Without the story line, your experience can simply be what it is, thereby allowing for the possibility of change.

~~You can welcome Spirit in. Allow Spirit to enter you, let it permeate each cell of your body, each fragment of your soul--including, of course, the impatience. Turn the restlessness over to Spirit. Don’t grasp it so tightly; give it away, perhaps just for this instant. Ask Spirit to attend to it, while you let go into richness of the moment. Obviously, this works best for those who conceive of meditation as a communion with Spirit. You touch Spirit simply as you are, impatience and all. No need to be shy. No need to be other than you are. Just show up and give yourself--yes, all of you--to Spirit.

Over time, each of these approaches will teach experientially that we are more than our fleeting reactions. But these are just some ideas. If restlessness is your issue, you can also ask directly for guidance on how best to respond. Then be still and listen. Whether it’s Spirit or intuition that answers, you’ll likely get a nudge in one direction or another. Honor it. Follow it.

Months may pass before you find a rhythm that translates into a more accepting, calmer approach to meditation. Allow yourself this time to settle in. Trust the process. Trust your process. If you have felt ‘called’ to meditate, trust that the appropriate skills and attitude will come to you. Give yourself a chance to discover that this is, indeed, true.

May we each show up in our meditation practice, in our lives, simply as we are, and come to accept the inevitability of our blossoming, trusting and allowing the Essence within us to flower.

Namaste!

Loanne Marie

PS. For other Meditation Myths and Half-Truths in this series, please click on Myth #1, Myth #3, and Myth #4. I'd love to hear about your experiences!