When Darkness Descends

Doom. Gloom. Darkness has descended and the world has lost its color. Your world is black and white. It is either all good or all bad and today Bad has smacked you in the face and stands sneering at you, glaring. Even the will to struggle seems to have evaporated. 

What to do?

Do nothing.

I know, that seems like rotten advice but bear with me. By saying "do nothing" I don't mean to imply you should slink off into a corner, lick your wounds and sink into your despair like an unsuspecting ant who has wandered onto quicksand. Slinking and licking and wandering are somethings. I mean do nothing. Notice what happens when you do nothing. Your eyes continue to blink, your organs continue to function, your breathing continues in and out, in and out. The earth continues to revolve around the sun, the stars continue to appear in the heavens, the whole cosmos goes about its mysterious business without any regard for your stinky mood. Stay here and keep noticing. There is an undercurrent here, a gentle pull that you might miss at first it is so undemanding. Contrasted with the loud strident voice of your pissy mood, it is easy to miss. But I guarantee you it is here. You don't feel it? That's because today is not your day to feel it, not because it isn't there. Struggling to find it will not work. Become absolutely still. Concentrate on your breathing. In and out. In and out.

Boring!  Yes, I know. But do it anyway. Notice your breath. Count each one if you like. If a thought intrudes allow it to pass then just come back to the counting. Start over if you lose your place. One. Two. Three.  But my life sucks! One. Two. Three. Four. Five. This is just stupid! One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Over and over and over. You won't give up. Oh, maybe today you might give up and go back to the fun of wallowing in despair. But you will be back, mark my words. You will be back because you know your salvation lies somewhere in the silence. You know it not because you read it here, you just know it. You have always known it. It's only a matter of time now.

Darkness comes not to pull you into an abyss but to show you the value of light. The problem always comes with the seeds of the solution and the seeds are cultivated and nourished in the silence.

Go. Now.

A Note to First Time Meditators:

There have been many books written on meditation. There are seminars, intensives, retreats to sign up for. There are rules everywhere. Legs in this posture. Hands like this. Hold your head in this position and your spine in that. Eyes open. Eyes closed. While certainly not harmful, be clear that these rules are mere stage props. Do what feels right to you. There is nothing more important than the willingness to show up, the earnest desire to find your way home to yourself. If you like the idea of prayer begin with a simple one such as "Please show me the way to happiness" and then just be silent and trust the process. Let go of any notion you may have had about what it should look like or how you should feel. Let the discipline to show up be the only effort you expend. The rest will take care of itself.

My Life as a Swinger

Dust flew as my feet hit the ground.  The dragging motion every time I reached the well worn middle slowed me down until it was safe to jump off. Mom had called me in for supper or my best friend wanted to play with me on the seesaw or it was getting dark-- for any of a number of reasons the swing always had to slow and stop so I could run on to other things.

I took such great joy in swinging when I was a child! My sturdy little legs pushing off, pumping and pumping, arms extended, head tilted back with the wind rushing through my hair, my toes tautly pointing to go higher, higher until I almost felt as though  I could set myself in orbit around the swing set. But the backward motion always followed the forward motion, the lows always followed the highs and the swing, eventually, always had to slow to a stop.

My legs are still sturdy-- thick ankles, big calves. I'm built more like a work horse than a race horse, much to the chagrin of my inner princess. Life has changed, though, since my playground days. The journey has become a bit more complicated than the one between the playground and the supper table, and the swing I ride these days is entirely inside my head.  Ups and downs, good days, bad days, highs and lows are all characterized as such by my own discernments, by a capricious inner judge, by an internal mental analytical service I must have signed up for sometime after I left the playground. 

For years the internal swinging was wild and crazy. Up one day, down the next, my mind would unfailingly and insistently tell me where I was-- in a good place, in a bad place, with the right person, with the wrong person, on the right path, on the wrong path. Not only that, there would always be this constant side commentary about what should be and what shouldn't be, about what was fair and what was unfair, how people should treat me and how they shouldn't treat me. It was exhausting, all this analysis, not to mention confusing because there were often conflicting thoughts. I bravely persisted for many years but eventually I became so tired, so overwhelmed by it all that my internal swing slowed down. It slowed way down. The clinical term for it was depression and I entered an entirely different phase of my life, one which my mind sought to characterize as hopeless. Yet I was getting sick, literally, of all the stuff my mind was telling me.  

There are gifts inherent in depression that we don't see when it first descends. Depression is a sane reaction to an insane world, a drawing down of the mind's awesome ability to call the shots. Oh, it still asserts itself. It tells you things like life is not worth living, things will never get better, and it uses the word failure a lot. For a while I bought into all of that and then I started noticing that some of the mind's last ditch attempts to maintain control didn't quite ring true. In fact, some of it was downright ridiculous. Sadly, it had never occurred to me to question my own thinking processes before. The minute it did, the tables began to turn. Hey, wait just a minute! How could there be nothing to live for when these three extraordinary children of mine, with their boundless enthusiasm, show me life in all its wonder day after day after day? All I had to do was pay attention. My children, with their beautiful beginner's minds, saved me.  They continue to save me. One questioned thought led to another and soon I was in the business of baloney detection and my mental operating system was undergoing a dramatic and life enhancing upgrade. 

These days the swing has slowed down to a gentle sway back and forth. This diminished movement reduces blur and enables me to see things more clearly and appreciate life as never before. The wild highs have been replaced by simple contentments which are far more fulfilling. The despairing lows matured into the grace of acceptance.

Life is not always easy. Life is not always kind. Eventually and inevitably life is taken from us entirely. Until that day I intend to make my best effort to choose happiness when a choice is offered (which is almost always) and practice my ability to accept adverse circumstance when it is not.  Author Karen Maezen Miller, in her book Momma Zen, says it best:

 "Happy matters most of all. And here's the surprise ending. You don't have to wait for happiness because there's no time but now to be happy.You don't have to go somewhere else because there's no place but here to find it. You don't have to do something else because there's nothing more to it. You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough. You just have to be happy."

Simple, yet not always so easy in practice. But we have to do just that. Practice.

On the Sweet Where You Live

People are sweet. I don't mean just the obviously kind, helpful and loving people, I mean all people. Beneath all the posturing, all the positionality, all the sticky icky stuff and habits that might indicate otherwise, people are just downright sweet. Now, granted, you can encounter some very finely crafted disguises out there and often some hastily constructed smokescreens. People go to great lengths to hide their sweetness. But I have seen it and I know. At the root of the root, in the heart of the heart, in the soul of the soul, an outrageous sweetness resides in the essential core of every human being. Every human being.

I have not met every human being, of course. It just occurs to me that if one or two or three of us have this sweetness, then all of us do. It only makes sense. The human blueprint would have to be fairly consistent in its essential elements, wouldn't it? So, I keep my eyes open. Sweetness is not always easy to spot. But every once in a while, like a bolt of lightening illuminating the darkened landscape, you see a furtive display. Once you've tasted it you're a junkie, looking for sweetness everywhere and often in the most unlikely places. Why? Because you know it has to be there. When you see it, you smile. When you don't see it, you look for it. If you still can't find it you lay in wait, you keep the faith and you know, you just know, it will reveal itself to you when the time is right.