Let me start with a huge amount of well wishes. I hope you’re ok. For us on this side of the land the sun is coming, and I even managed to sit outside with my morning chai today.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write here as there’s so many wonderful things to say, news to share or thoughts to ponder on. So, I’m going to keep it simple and write a little about practice, which I suppose makes sense given that’s what lots of us here do. I love meditation. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, however. The mind is often contracted and judgemental, and the inner narrative can be much harsher than the outer. Only taking a look, on purpose, at our inner landscape can really be a journey of wonder. Wow, is this really what other humans around me are experiencing…yes, probably!
Freedom is a word often used in the meditation world. But freedom from what? I can only share my views as they are today, so for me right now, I’ll say freedom from glue!
Do any of you have a ‘go to’? For me it’s sugar. When the inner world feels overwhelmed or under too much demand etc, sweet is where I go. What we work with slowly, repeatedly and with kind patience, is that sugar distraction isn’t freedom….unfortunately! Sometimes actually, it’s sensible to distract the mind, but when we talk about freedom, we mean ‘freedom in the midst of sticky mind states’, not freedom by slipping off the edge. Rather than giving some space for overwhelm for example, to stick around a while, unstick, then pass away, we kind of glue it in place. We glue and then we react; get busy, get working, get controlling etc. On top of that we can glue blame and/or story.
I’ll end by looping back to, “this doesn’t mean it’s always easy”. This ungluing takes time and it’s a process for most of us. Certain mind states have a lot of energy and others are so familiar, they feel like ‘me’. It can actually be scary to start to unpick and unstick from them. Our ground can feel unfamiliar, unclear and even unsafe at first.
What helps is when we get the colours, old magazines, shiny scraps of paper, macaroni, leaves and twigs, and we stick the positivity as much as we can. Listen to the birds, call a friend, sing, dance, move, cook, read or whatever you like……and glue glue glue! Inspired by Captain Tom, something good can happen every day.