A Blessed Silence

I wake in the night. The house is quiet and my husband sleeps beside me, breath slow and steady. No noise explains my waking, and there is no worry in me this night. I lay still for several minutes, but sleep does not return. I begin to wonder if perhaps I’m being called. At the very least, meditation would be a much better use of my time than lying here waiting for sleep.

           

I rise, wrap my robe around me, climb the stairs. I sit on my cushion in the darkened room~~and am immediately drawn into a silence, broad and deep. This silence envelops me as it seems to hold everything~~the tick of the clock, the creak of the bird feeder swinging below my window, even the wind that sets such swinging in motion. Minutes pass, though the sweep of time, too, seems absorbed within something much larger, something vast and unchanging. My edges begin to blur.

           

In The Monk and the Rabbi, an online video, Benedictine monk, author and lecturer Brother David Steindl~Rast defines mysticism as, “an experience of communion…with the Ultimate,” one so complete that, at least for a few moments “an annihilation of the self” occurs.

           

Psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the term peak experience to describe those moments when we feel exceptionally alive, wonder~filled, and deeply connected to the world around us. Time stands still and individual concerns fall away. Brother David tells us that Maslow maintained throughout his life that “the peak experience was indistinguishable from the mystic experience,” and only avoided the word mystical to side~step the skepticism of his peers.

           

The capacity for such transcendence seems part of our human wiring, available to us all. As Brother David puts it, “The mystic is not a special kind of human being, but every human being is a special kind of mystic.”According to this man who has spent the vast majority of his 89 years as a contemplative and student of the Divine, the only difference between mystics and the rest of us is that, “the great mystics…allow this experience to flow into their everyday living.”

           

Sitting on my cushion, the silence swells and pulls me deeper. While I don’t know if I experience “an annihilation of the self,” my individual life does seem largely irrelevant, no longer a focus of attention.

No, the Ultimate holds me. Cradled in that silence, I experience the truth of Rumi’s words, “Silence is the language of God/All else is poor translation.” This language fills me until, at last, I gather myself together, and return to bed~~and find the Ultimate accompanies my every step.

           

It cushions me as I lay my head on the pillow, enfolds me as I settle the flannel sheet across my shoulders. It seems I needn’t have left my bed’s cozy warmth at all. 

Immersed still, I tumble headlong into a deep sleep.

Loanne Marie

Here's a link to The Monk and the Rabbi. And here's a link to Brother David's website, gratefulness.org, which has lots wonderful things. I particularly enjoyed the longer videos under Spiritual Biography, in partnership with Commonweal here.

                        

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 #3

Myth #3: The purpose of meditation is to have a mystical experience.

This is a popular misconception. It is also one of those myths that leads folks to abandon the practice when such experiences don’t come--or when those that do, don’t last.

Transitory experience of any kind is not the goal. The purpose of meditation is something much deeper and more lasting--the complete transformation of our lives. Sounds heady, I know, but it’s true. While you will have some meditations that are delightful, and may even have moments that could be described as mystical, you will likely have many sessions that are boring, irritating or downright disturbing. A meditation high is not the goal. If it is--even on an unconscious level--your meditation will be in danger of devolving into a technique for entertainment, an additional method of grasping, or just another project. And really, don’t we all devote enough of our precious energy to that sort of thing already?

Meditation helps us learn to be right here, right now. Our attention strays repeatedly, and we continually draw it back from wherever it has gone. In so doing, we begin to gain clarity about what we gravitate toward in the absence of any external stimulation. We become aware of the webs we weave, of our habitual tendencies and agendas, of the way we dissociate from pure experience--including experience of the Infinite--as a matter of course. But more important than any of these realizations--which might be interesting, but when all’s said and done, somewhat irrelevant--we increase our ability to bring it all back home, back to this moment. We learn to be present.

Over time, the effects of such a practice begin to filter into the rest of our lives. We learn to live more fully, to experience more deeply, to choose our focus more consciously. It’s what meditation does for us off the cushion that really matters. Are we calmer and more loving? Can we keep things in perspective? Do we recognize when we’re being carried off by a story line about the life in front of us rather than remaining alive to things simply as they are? Do we catch ourselves sooner when we’ve been snookered once more by our mind’s version of reality or when we behave badly? Can we come back to center? These abilities are the gifts of meditation.

And there is another one. Ultimately, as we practice wholeheartedly and steadily, we will be better able to recognize and open to the Divine as It appears within the stuff of our lives. Here’s the truth embedded within this particular myth. By enhancing our ability to be present, meditation can over time increase our capacity for direct experience of the Holy. So, while going to our cushion with an agenda is detrimental to being present with whatever happens there, we may eventually find ourselves coming into a more intimate relationship with the Sacred.

While many committed practitioners never have a direct experience of the Infinite while meditating, others do. Such encounters, however, are not worth much if they come without a sense of the Holy that carries into daily life. Being able to experience the Sacred in every moment of our small lives--in the beautiful and the terrifying--and to act from that awareness is to live within a mystical perspective. Meditation may or may not bring us the Hollywood version of discreet technicolor mystical encounters, but it can be a method toward adopting a mystical way of life. This is so much more valuable.

As has been said before, meditation is a relationship like any other. There will be highs and there will be lows. It is the ability to nurture an abiding devotion--day in, day out--that’s crucial. Otherwise, just as is the unfortunate reality of too many human marriages, you and your meditation practice may go your separate ways once the novelty wears off. And this is so unfortunate because, just as in those human relationships, it’s when the novelty wears off that things really get hoppin’. That’s when you can truly begin to grow and deepen.

One of the things I’ve learned as a psychotherapist is that big, in-your-face changes are not nearly as trustworthy as those that start small and steadily grow to bear fruit. I believe the same is true of meditation. If you do have a wildly ecstatic incident or an amazing vision, just be there as fully as you can--just as you do when you sit through a particularly annoying time. Keep your focus steady and remain open to whatever is given you. But don’t become too enamored of these times, and keep coming back to the process even when those knock-your-socks-off moments are few and far between. Remember, the real fruits will be experienced over time within your daily life.

While lovely experiences are...well...lovely,we do not meditate to get goodies. We meditate to live more fully--which I guess you could say is a goodie. It’s a goodie, though, that keeps giving long after your meditation session is over. Every moment we fully experience is a gift. And to the extent that these moments contain the seeds of further gifts, there is an exponential growth of goodies awaiting us. We just need to allow ourselves to perceive them and be with them fully. As we do, a mystical way of life may, indeed, become ours.

I have heard it said that our job in meditation is simply to show up. The rest is in God’s hands--however you conceptualize Him/Her/It. I like that. Our responsibility is to show up, day after day, through dry times and moist, through boring sittings and ones we might describe as magical. Just sit. Just be here. Now.

Namaste!

Loanne Marie

PS. For other Meditation Myths and Half-Truths in this series, please see Myth #1, Myth #2, and Myth #4. I'd love to hear about your experiences!