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.

Reverence in Flight

Arriving at the gate for a recent flight to Seattle, my husband and I were surprised to see all the passengers in the boarding area standing facing the floor to ceiling windows which afforded a view of the tarmac. When we inquired, we were told a fallen Marine was being carried home on our plane. We joined the crowd and gazed through the window as all the ground personnel in their orange fluorescent safety vests assembled below to pay their respects. There was a surreal silence in the waiting area, normally bustling with folks coming and going, announcements of arrivals and departures and chatter of the passengers.  A flag drapped baggage cart drove up with the remains of the Marine in a large heavy box marked "Handle with Extreme Care". The escorting Marine saluted and ground personnel stood with hands over their hearts as the box went up the luggage conveyor and disappeared into the cargo hold. Up in the boarding area, we all stood quietly, respectfully, many of us with tears streaming down our cheeks.

When we boarded the plane, a hold up in the line had me waiting beside the seated Marine escort who was staring straight ahead. I looked at him, he glanced my way and we exchanged barely imperceptable nods-- miniscule enough to accommodate the enormity of the reason for this emotional acknowledgment. There were other military people on board and I overheard one of them say the young fallen Marine was twenty years old. Twenty.

Our flight was three and a half hours, enough time for people to turn their thoughts back to vacation plans or business agendas, but there seemed to be a palpable difference in the energy on the plane. To me personally it felt as though we were all connected -- connected to each other, to the young man below us, to the grieving family awaiting their loved one, to other Marines and service personnel in far off places. The blatant presence of human suffering, it seemed, had awakened us to our commonality.

After touching down in Seattle, our pilot, his voice full of emotion, made a brief announcement and asked us to remain seated as the Marine was taken off the plane. The entire plane was quiet as the passengers watched the ceremony below--  there were seven or eight Marines and the assembled ground personnel, but also, now, a mother and a father who had come to take their child home. 

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.