|
Today's
Meditation:
If it
weren't for running and walking, I don't know if I would
meditate at all. The stereotypical meditation
"position" is one that I can't maintain for more
than a few minutes, but that doesn't mean that I can't
meditate. When I'm out on a long run, it's one of
the nicest feelings I experience because my mind quiets
and I'm focused on my surroundings and myself. My
thoughts tend to settle down and I find myself feeling
peaceful, and usually when I finish a run I feel
invigorated, not tired.
Think
of a raging river. The riverbed is steady and firm,
providing a path for the river. While it does lose
bits and pieces as the water rushes by, it's generally
stable and quiet in the bed. If you think of the
river as the thoughts that are constantly rushing through
your mind and the bed as the calm part of your mind that
stands steady-- but that we rarely visit-- you can get an
idea of what's going on in our minds. Are we
constantly being pushed along by the rapids to places we
don't even want to go, or do we constantly visit the bed
in order to keep ourselves calm and not let ourselves get
pulled along by the "urgency" of our many, many
thoughts?
Meditation
can help us to visit that bed, that place of calm that's
buried beneath the rapids. But meditation is
different for everyone. Some of us are much better
at walking meditation than we are at sitting meditation;
for some, doing the dishes is a helpful meditative
practice. Anything that causes us to focus our
attention completely on something positive like our breath
or cleaning dishes allows the other thoughts to settle
down so that they're not making us miserable or stressed. We can
meditate in the shower when we focus on the water hitting
our skin; we can meditate while we're driving on a country
road with almost no traffic and we're focused on the road
(I think that driving in traffic, though, isn't at all
meditative); we can meditate by reading something light
and whimsical and focusing on the story.
Meditation
is a journey inward, towards something that exists already
and that is simply waiting for us to visit. Our
inner selves are peaceful by nature, but the hectic
lifestyles that we've adopted in order to fit in with our
societies build walls between our conscious self and our
inner self, and meditation is one of the only ways
available to continue to visit that inner self-- visits
that it needs in order that it not become too lonely.
|
