Going within is our final frontier. I know this with a full heart that it has been mine for the last year and a half. Meditating has been and continues to carve within me a landscape that was as foreign to me as visiting a far off and exotic land.
What prevented me before when I dabbled before? Thoughts such as: I don’t have the time, nothing is happening, how is this worthwhile when I need to be _______ ?( fill in the blank), I’m not doing this right, my experiences don’t feel and sound like the ones I've read about, watching my thoughts frightens me as it’s a jungle in there, and on and on. I’m exhausted looking at my reasoning behind why I couldn’t and didn’t continue with a meditation practice.
It was only when I entered into working with my mentor who gently recommended I give it a try. Quiet myself for just a few minutes, observe my inhale, exhale, even play some meditative music if that felt helpful. Begin very small, remain curious and just keep practicing it to discover how it was making me feel. I had nothing to lose, everything to gain and having my mentor inquire as to how it was going for me kept me accountable and engaging with it.
What thrills me is that this time around I did not try to manage or control it. I just allowed it to have its way with me. At first, it needed to happen in the early hours of the morning because if my husband awakened and walked into where I was meditating it felt intrusive and I was even a bit self conscious. Now, as my practice deepens I often am not even aware when he has entered into the room and it has been encouraging him to find his seat, close his eyes and mediate as well.
Beginning each day with my practice has been slowly transforming what comes after. I can feel it in my bones as it carries me through whatever may unfold. It’s an inner calm and a sense of feeling tethered and grounded to something far greater than myself. It asks that I not forget and begin searching outside of myself for that which is nestled within and to keep returning to this practice that is growing this tender, soft seed of me.
No packing a suitcase required, waiting time, making reservations, simply a quiet place to sit for even just a few minutes or longer allowing my experience to have its way with me.
One can read books, listen to podcasts, research about the “how to meditate” yet I believe it’s our natural state of being that we may have forgotten? Once I took the constructs away of how to do it, I could engage fully within it. Dropping down into my heart and body feels more natural the longer I engage within my practice.
Cultivating a lightness and a sense of humor as to where my thoughts may take me at times has allowed me to remove any judgment around it. My thoughts resembling popcorn popping wildly out from under a lid when it has been removed happens. It is not a failure and understanding this keeps me coming back. Sometimes it may be all that it is, watching my interior circus, yet in other moments I am taken to the depths of where I am unable to travel to outside of myself.
It is what I am most proud of about myself lately. My meditation practice, perhaps that appears simplistic, yet I’ve remained with it daily and I’m noticing the fruits of it. It’s as if my insides are experiencing a deep tissue massage with my favorite essential oils. What is surfacing is a sense of inner calm that I have yet to discover outside of myself or able to purchase.
Our final frontier, landing within, tending to our inner gardens and becoming a witness to what is desiring
our attention is made ready for us by the practice of meditation. I visualize a miner’s hat with its light turned on illuminating our steps into our interior landscapes. It is always available, is a light traveler, goes with us everywhere and I believe the only hindrance might be ourselves. I can’t imagine life without it now and support seeing it taught to our children in schools as part of their daily curriculum. We are never too old nor too young to begin a meditation practice that may become our medicine we have been seeking all along.
How the Light Comes by Jan Richardson
I cannot tell you how the light comes.
What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining.
That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us.
That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain.
That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart.
I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee.
And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still
to the blessed light that comes.
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