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.

A Body of Evidence

OUCH! That hurts!! Suddenly we are in touch with our bodies. We touched the hot skillet, we missed the nail and hit our thumb with the hammer, we fell off the ladder and broke our leg, we did any one of a number of things we humans routinely do to cause ourselves physical pain. Or perhaps we did nothing on our own, perhaps we contracted a virus or got a disease or were injured in some way through no fault of our own. Suddenly our bodies become the focus of attention and what do we want? We want the pain to stop, we want the disease to go away, we want an end to whatever physical misery has come our way. We make the demand that things return to pain free normality and if we are lucky, and they do, our attention once again strays away from the body and out into the world.

Consider this. The relationship you have with your body is very much like the relationship you have with the people in your life. What would happen if you only paid attention to your children when they were misbehaving? You'd have some pretty rowdy children, would be my guess. What if you only spoke to your friends or your spouse when they displeased you and then only to express your disappointment or displeasure? You'd be in some pretty miserable relationships, I'd say. Yet, how often do we give our bodies positive attention, express gratitude, reverence, even adoration? It sounds embarrassingly uncomfortable, doesn't it? How did we get here, in this place where we take our bodies so for granted, where we have all these standards for how they should look, how they should feel, what they should be able to do, and all without a smidgen of recognition for the miracles they afford us every single day?

Our bodies have an estimated hundred trillion cells and each one of those cells performs six trillion tasks a second, a second, and each cell instantly knows what the other cells are doing. The astounding complexity of the human body boggles the mind. Just to scratch the top of your head involves a complex set of signals and instructions that represent an absolute miracle. Ask anyone with paralysis about this miracle, this gift that we take for granted every single day.

So, next time you stand in front of the mirror and critique your physical appearance, next time you take ill or suffer some injury, take a step back and consider your relationship with your body.  Take a moment for a deep bow to the mysterious gift of a human body, whatever its current state. You can be assured, your body is working hard to tend to your needs every single second whether or not you acknowledge its constant, unwavering, unselfish contribution. Talk about being loved unconditionally. There is a body of evidence to support the notion that it is your number one fan.

Two Buckets, Two Ways

1.

Jack and Jill went up the hill. They didn't know each other, mind you. In fact, they wouldn't have noticed each other at all if Jack hadn't stopped abruptly to look at the clouds, causing Jill to plow into him and drop the bucket she was carrying to market. Jill's bucket was dinged up pretty badly but when Jack offered to give her his own bucket which was new and shiny, Jill declined. She hurried away from him, anxious to get to market and fill her bucket. Jack smiled, nodded, and kept about his leisurely pace to market.

There was so much at market that day! Jill hoped she had enough time to get everything she wanted. She scurried from one vendor to another, filling her bucket with each new acquisition. Her bucket had suffered punctures in the fall and some things were spilling out. That made it hard to get it completely filled up and when she got home, after an exhausting day of searching and buying, she still felt as though she didn't have enough. She was determined to go to market the next day and get the things she'd missed.

And what of Jack? He made his way to market, arriving much later than Jill. Some of the vendors, in fact, had already closed, having sold all their goods. Jack was unperturbed, looked around a while, talked to a few people, found a few things he liked to put in his bucket and made his way home where he spent the evening smiling to himself and thinking about what a wonderful day it had been.

2.

In another part of town, astoundingly, another Jack and Jill were going up separate paths on another hill, this time to fetch some (you guessed it) water. This Jack also stopped to look at the clouds, at precisely the time their paths crossed, causing Jill to take a tumble and her bucket to fall. What are the odds?

Jack brought his bucket back, full of water, and was happy and content. Jill, on the other hand, had a damaged and leaky bucket now and by the time she arrived home more than half her water was gone.

Every day it was so. Jack made his way to the well and brought a full bucket of water back home. Jill lost more than half of her water on the way back from the hill and had to make many more trips as a result. Jack noticed Jill's dilemma and suggested she get herself a new bucket, but Jill, a creature of habit, was rather fond of her old bucket and paid him no mind. Through winter and into spring it was the same, Jack with his sturdy bucket and Jill with her leaky bucket making twice as many trips. 

It had been a dry spring that year and drought necessitated extra trips to the well for everyone. The hill was parched and dry and the municipality had issued a fire warning for the area. Usually vibrant with color this time of year, the hill for the most part was depressing to see. People took to using only one path up to the well, Jill's path, which inexplicably had a profusion of wild flowers blooming all along its perimeter.

The moral of the stories, you ask? Perhaps we are too eager to assign morals to stories. Perhaps things simply are the way they are.