AM I MEDITATING?

“Am I meditating?” That’s the question I asked part way through a week long Silent Meditation Retreat. A group of us circled to share and ask, briefly breaking our silence. Meditation is whatever experience you have when you come to the practice to meditate. Sitting, walking, generative (guided), recollective (receptive, reflective), Yin, random moments during the day – all are types and times of meditation. Kindness, Attention, Tolerance and Patience – what we bring. Everything teaches.

DISCLAIMER: I do not pretend to offer guidance or wisdom within the sentences of this post, but I do hope to share with you, the reader, some snippets to ponder or practice, small gems that I brought home.

STATS:

https://joshsummers.net (Josh Summers)

https://freeportyogaco.com (Terry Cochburn)

https://www.spiritfireretreatcenter.com (Steve, Tim and, of course, DK)

August 27 through September 2, 2018. Daily schedule: 6 a.m. to lights out at 10 p.m. UNPLUGGED for the week! Sitting/journal, breakfast, work period, instruction/sitting/journal, walking meditation, sitting/journal/walking meditation, 12-1 lunch. Work period and time for a walk. Sitting/journal or small group discussion, sitting/journal/walking meditation; 4-5:45 p.m. Yin Yoga with Terry. Dinner and time for a walk, Dharma talk, sitting/journal, done. 24 hours: tea, meditation, wandering indoors and out.

SILENCE: This was the easy part. Go figure. When it was finally appropriate to speak again, the words came slowly and quietly until they built momentum culminating in a rather enthusiastic closing breakfast!

STILLNESS: Finding a comfortable seat is the start. Settling into stillness may be both the beginning and the ending of a practice. If that’s all we do, we have meditated. For me, the physicality of stillness, recognizing that it is not really passive but active in its own right, makes it an achievable component of my personal practice. As the week wore on I was better able to identify that very second when I slipped into stillness. Perhaps it was only a second, but it was real and I knew it. From my journal: “There is a definite moment when I slide into the sweet spot of the right dynamics, right alignment, to rest in stillness. It is purely physical and I recognize it when it happens. All of these physical experiences and qualities surely have a perfect counterpart mentally, emotionally and spiritually!”

MEDITATION: Throughout the week we meditated for blocks of 30 minutes the techniques of our choice. Generative meditation is guided, controlled, and can be helpful at the beginning of a sitting; receptive allows thought to wander, develop, return or resolve, tolerant, yielding; conflicted happens in any process. “A meditation retreat is like a massage for your psychic knots!”

While a sitting leads to mental processes, walking shifts focus to movement and embodied experience. I found attention to the mechanics of walking meditation, placing one foot in front of the other, led to balance and centeredness, easily seguing to the mental and emotional. Walking and sitting reinforce each other.

Josh guided us to use our schedule, silence and intention as the framework of our retreat. Through meditation we might develop awareness of our inner world and use it to benefit daily life. Repeatedly we need to remind ourselves to bring qualities of interest and awareness to everything we’re doing.

Meditation is part of a larger tradition. As we learned more about a few basic precepts of The Buddha, we also learned that Dharma is a collection of teachings that remind us of our own unique awareness and are easily inclusive of multiple spiritual paths (Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, etc.)

Coming to sit/walk in meditation forces all of us to confront the habit patterns of our minds. Stillness reveals what is below our consciousness. Movement masks pain. And then there are the big four: Kindness. Attention. Tolerance. Patience.

During one of my morning sittings, I began in prayer. I recognized gratitude, as I am so richly blessed. One by one I visited each family member, friend, client, naming each and blessing each. (Loving kindness may sound a bit hokey, but the concept is pervasive! How our world would change if a practice of loving kindness could insinuate itself into community, business, education and politics!)

Sometimes I like to contemplate a single word and see where that leads. For example, patience. I am impatient. I want to do do do. I want to hurry up and achieve. And what does this say? It says I am afraid that I do not have enough – not enough time, resources, fitness, years to do all that I yet want to do. In relationship, if I am impatient, I do not have enough tolerance. So, perhaps patience presumes abundance. Nice, eh?

I might begin a sitting watching my breath, listening to sounds, squirming until still, thinking about a word … and then the meditative flow carries me off on its current, meandering here and there and perhaps finally pooling. The journey is mine to receive, investigate and relate.

JOURNALING: Used as a tool, journaling allows us to find our own language. Start with what we remember and then reflect upon it, connecting with our experience. The act of writing imprints, develops and expands. What is literal or factual transitions into creativity and ultimately that which is functional.

Towards the end I wrote: “The fabric of my life is richly textured and more profoundly beautiful for it. The tears have been stitched, the holes mended, the rough edges smoothed. Though the bones have at times been broken, they have healed stronger than before.”

TEACH: A teacher is a spiritual friend. The ‘teacher’ is everything that is happening. If you let it, everything will teach. At this Retreat I was in the company of teachers. In fact, we are all teachers in some respect, each of us giving generously of ourselves as parents, coaches, leaders, managers, advisors, trainers or whatever. And we each, at some point, desperately need to refill our depleted reserves. Thus we seek to be taught.

Thank you, my Yoga Teacher and friend, Terry Cockburn.

Thank you, my Meditation and Yin Teacher and friend, Josh Summers.

Oh, what a privilege to teach and to be taught.

TAKE-HOME: “If we lose something, it was never ours in the first place.” It is not about holding on or letting go, but to cultivate openness to receive all experiences in their totality. Learn to be at peace with that. Daily practice? Different way to look at our relationships, our jobs, our words and reactions, our self-talk? Loving kindness? Perhaps I cannot claim intensity and drama within the context of each sitting; perhaps I cannot claim to have “gone deep” or to have become “enlightened.” Hey, I only did this for one week and those experiences are not so cheaply purchased!

But I will say this, my life IS changed. How so? I do not even wish to define that now. I will wait. I will continue to seek that sweet spot of stillness, if only for a few seconds. I will practice. I will study. I will do all with the presumption of abundance. And gratitude.

(and with my fellow Retreat attendees, I will near the end of each Meditation session with Ring the damn bell!)