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.

Overwhelming Truths

I read an article this past week about the devastation and loss in Haiti due to the earthquake there earlier this year. Apparently, many of those who perished were young, educated people who worked in government or the private sector, or were going to university and had made the choice to stay in their home country of Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, instead of opting to emigrate to greener pastures abroad as did so many of their contemporaries. Many of Haiti's best and brightest young people lost their lives that fateful day, and the terrible sadness of that loss compounds when one considers the far reaching implications of this for Haiti as a nation, facing overwhelming odds as it seeks to rebuild amid the horrendous rubble.

Contemplating this scenario and the idea, in general, of recovery from any devastating disaster, whether that be a natural disaster or a personal one, I thought about the very natural tendency of human beings to become overwhelmed, how that state of anxiety is generated and how it actually impedes the process of recovery by reducing the energy available for the work that needs to be done. It comes down to our propensity for resisting what has happened and our habit of spinning out of control in our thoughts, which have a life of their own and can drown us in an ocean of despair. It becomes very important, then, to notice this mental phenomenon and understand how we sabotage ourselves, and our efforts to move on, at every turn. We look at our lives and think it shouldn't be this way and so we are, in effect, at war with what is, which is an incredible exercise in futility. What our lives are, they are. Cultivating non-resistance, then, could only have life enhancing consequences.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." Each day, instead of being at war with what is, we could mindfully devote all of our energies to attending to whatever is in front of us at the moment, one thing at a time, one by one by one, with devotion and love and steadfastness, which qualities, in themselves, promote true joy of being. 

Grocery Shopping in Shoe Stores

I have a dear friend who is going through a tough time in her life right now.  She called me this week and we talked about the challenges she is facing and the anxiety it is producing in her.  She doesn't like the way anxiety has taken over her life and her resultant insecurity.  She said she seems to want reassurance from everyone that things will be okay, that everything will turn out alright.  I think she was feeling unsettled because even though many of her closest relatives and friends do, in fact, try to remain positive by telling her that things will be fine she continues to crave that reassurance even though she never feels satisfied when she gets it.  So many times in life we look out into the world and the people around us and say make me happy  or give me peace  or fulfill me.  Now, granted, we often have loving people in our lives who try to do exactly that, bless their hearts, but unfortunately your  happiness, your  peace, your  fulfillment is not theirs  to give and in many cases they are still looking for it themselves. They can then feel a certain resentment that they are being asked to provide something for somebody else that they are still lacking in their own lives. 

 The truth is, and we all know this, there are no guarantees for anything in life.  People have accidents, people get sick, people lose all their money, their houses, their possessions.  Some people die young or have to live with life changing disabilities.  Some people in this world live in unspeakably deplorable conditions or regularly suffer abuse at the hands of those who may hold power over them in one way or another.  The uncertainty of life scares us, sends us scurrying to find reassurance that we ourselves will not suffer.  Yet it is impossible for the world or anybody in it to give us a "free pass" from suffering.  The happiness, the peace, the fulfillment we crave cannot be obtained from the world; it is something that arises from within  us when we have squarely faced the unknown, taken time to be still, and have fully accepted where we happen to be and what we happen to be experiencing.   The persistence we have demonstrated in trying to obtain peace from the world without, where it is not, can then be re-directed to the world within  where it most certainly is.  We have been shopping in the wrong places.