At first, I find myself chomping on thoughts — the salty bits, the sweet morsels, the spicy spiraling thoughts that smell so tempting. I keep grabbing one without even realizing it. One minute I'll be sinking into meditation and the next moment I'll be saying to myself, "I can't believe he said that!" It's difficult to push those thoughts aside, leave them lying in the air. And below the thoughts are layers of feelings, boxes and bins of anger and sadness and frustration, the feelings that tend to sink below the happier thoughts that I live with daily. The little clothes closet quite fills up with thoughts and feelings, all swirling about in the darkness.
Some days, I am able to push the swirling aside and sink into stillness, allowing myself to separate from all the chaos and find a place where I can simply be. Some days the closet around me — the sneakers, the shelf of jeans, the hanging dress shirts — disappears. Sometimes I can move into a place where I can listen to a power greater than myself. Other days, the jangling thoughts are just too loud: I feel successful if I can just get them to quiet a little.
So I'd be lying it I said that I stepped out of the closet with profound spiritual insights, with nuggets of great wisdom. Mostly, I don't. And often I'm angry at myself for letting thoughts intrude. Always, it's a struggle to achieve anything that even approximates meditation. And yet, something is happening, something that keeps me at this practice.
I can feel it. Even though I'm sitting still the whole time, I am twisting and turning, rubbing against rock. My skin turns translucent and peels away. I am shedding.
5 comments:
That's the way it is, isn't it? Just being aware of the thoughts is a big step in a non-linear process. SOme days are good and some days are filled with minutes of realizing that I'm thinking. The benfit I've gotten from it, besides from feeling calmer, is being aware that thoughts pass and that they don't have to direct my behavior--as in "Oh that was a bitchy thought. I'll let it pass."
I figure that those thoughts are a part of the whole. I usually will examine them, hold them for a while and then put them on the palm of my outstretched hand and let them float away...
snake!
This is such a beautiful post. I love that you meditate in a closet. There's something in that about being cloistered....or something...
In any case, thanks for a lovely post.
Oh, but it's all the meditation. Noticing the thoughts come, noticing your mind get snagged on them. The stillness is nice, when it comes, but -- beyond showing you that it's possible -- it's not what meditation is for. Not in my tradition, anyway. The point is not to force being still, the point is just to see what's really there, what the mindstream is actually up to. Rather than what it purports to be up to :-)
(happening by on my every-few-months visit to your blog, to see who's got naked recently and to see if everyone's all right :-> xoxo)
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