When things turn incendiary, and the world burns up around us, I find it wise to step away from the fire, and hold the world in the single flame of a candle. In that one source of light is the focal point of an evening’s meditation. Andy used to do a candle meditation, where he would stare intently at a candle for a while, then lose his eyes and work to picture the candle in his mind. It was another exercise of focus and concentration, of using an object to hold the attention and train the mind to forego all other distracting thoughts.
There will always be nagging distractions competing for notice. They are not easily banished or relegated to the back of the mind. The goal is to quell them for a moment, and to discover the peace when they are held in such abeyance. When you feel that, when you develop the knack to breathe deeply and slowly into the moment, letting the distractions and worries go, you find the magic of mindfulness. If you consistently focus on finding that, the rest of life feels a little calmer, a little less manic. And if you make it a practice that informs most of your day, life can be quite pleasant indeed.
Most of us have an inner dialogue, that little voice we hear which expresses everything we are too shy or scared or smart enough not to say out loud. (I say ‘most’ because there are reportedly some people who do not have such a thing, which is marvelously unfathomable to me.) That inner dialogue can often wreak havoc, especially when it gets out of hand, which it sometimes does for me. Mostly these conversations in my head happen in the evening, as I’m mentally remembering the day. Sometimes it’s just a case of replaying a moment and coming up with something much more brilliant than what I came up with then, a wittier comeback to something someone said; more often it’s a kinder and softer response to something more cutting that came out of my mouth. Virgos run the risk of overanalyzing and being overcritical, so this inner voice is the bane of my existence, because it cuts me as much as it cuts those around me.
Whenever I find myself getting bogged down in these dialogues, I try to calmly recenter myself, taking in a few deep breaths, and stabilizing myself by simply being present. Pausing to look around at whatever might be near, I pick apart little details to distract the mind before it heads off to the races. A smudge on the windowpane of the front door. A wrinkle in the silk curtain framing the window. The gentle drone of some faraway lawnmower, perhaps executing the final few passes it will make over the grass this year. I will tune into my body – the slight itch of a recent vaccine in my arm, the cold toes of an exposed foot, and the breath which I make deeper and slower and calmer.
This is how I calm the voices in my head. This is how to gain control of the inner narrative. This is how mindfulness manifests itself.
We dive into a few weeks of Mercury in retrograde motion starting tomorrow, September 10th, and no one is ready or wants it to happen, but humans have no say or control over the heavenly bodies nor the earth’s own motion. In preparation for this, I’ve been mediating consistently for 20 minutes every day, which is my usual practice. It brings my baseline down a bit, allowing for the rollercoaster of Mercury in retrograde to be slightly less tumultuous.
These periods are often viewed with dread and apprehension, and I succumb to that a fair share of the time. When things go wrong and disrupt the daily schedule, that’s tough for a Virgo to take. This time around, I’ll try to roll with the punches, accept the little snafus that are a basic part of life, and bend with the winds rather than trying to rigidly resist them.
My daily meditations will continue, and I will attempt to be a bit more mindful outside of those sessions, bringing the practice into every waking moment. That takes some effort and focus, and that’s the point. When the mind hones in on being mindful and present, it has less time and space to be bothered by petty concerns and worries. The simple slowing of one’s breath – and indulging in each slow inhale and exhale – can be a soothing method of instantly calming down when you get stuck behind a school bus or find your computer being difficult. It also reminds me of how silly those annoyances are, and how silly so much of life is, and that’s a good reminder for anyone as serious as I can too often be.
Let’s get through this Mercurial madness together, being mindful, being present, being open to change and the unexpected turns of the day.
Walking outside after a rage-filled thunderstorm, I felt the air shift. Swaths of heat and humidity alternated with bands of cooling and comfortable air, the temperature changing in tumultuous five-degree increments. It was unsettling weather, but good for rainbows and spectacular cloud formations. I was reminded that we are a few weeks away from the big seasonal upheaval from summer to fall, and I took a deep breath to bring the mind into a more thoughtful space. It reminded me of the end of 2019, when I first started meditating. It all felt so foreign and rocky then, and my first few spurts of meditation – only a few minutes at a time – felt awkward and stunted, like I might not be on the right path, like I was doing it all wrong. Yet instead of giving up, I pushed through, leaning into the discomfort, opening up to the pain.
Construction on the interior had begun in those final months of 2019, in the lead-up to the winter of a year we had no idea would turn so darkly treacherous. The renovation within would come just in time, as if the universe knew I’d never make it through without some sense of peace and calm, some inner sanctuary when the rest of the world, even in my own home, fell to pieces and crashed around me. When winter exploded in ice and wind, snow and darkness, I would take up the lotus position in the middle of a room lit only by a candle, swirled by a stick of palo santo incense, and filled only with the distant hum of a heater or the muffled rush of wind outside the window.
As far from the sunny season of summer as I was from a place of safety and security, I found the inner-sanctum of serenity just in time, and I clung to it desperately. Grasping that lifeline like the savior it would prove to be, I stumbled minute by minute into the way to peace. At first I took it in five minute increments. It was all I could manage. It was also, gratefully, enough. Pushing through the first few weeks of this, I gradually increased the minute by the week – six minutes a day, then seven minutes a day, then eight. The weeks passed, the worst of winter went by, and when spring finally arrived again, I was up to twenty minutes a day.
Sometimes it went by quickly: I’d lower myself into the lotus position, start breathing and counting, and soon the time was up. Other times moved slowly by, each second elongating into something greater, in ways both good and trying. Not every day did I find tranquility and peace in the meditation, but every day I tried.
My days of wishing for perfection had been replaced by a wish for whatever was good-enough. The perfect was perennially elusive, unattainable, impossible. A lovely wish, a lovely goal, a lovely vision to which we might strive, but best kept out of the realm of the expected or even simply the realm of the possible.
Ease of mind, ease of breath – there it is again, the reminder to breathe, not just to breathe in, but to breathe out. It’s possibly the most important part of breathing, and the one we neglect the most, so eager are we for new breath, new air, new life. We forget the necessity of releasing the breath that has come before, releasing the past – the immediate and long-distant past. When I tune into that, everything becomes a little easier, a little lighter, and I feel the renovating power of meditation again.
Beneath the coral bark maple described here earlier this morning, this patch of lady ferns unfurls its delicate splendor. It’s sending up another batch of new fronds – a second showing to see us through the end of the season, and I’m grateful for such renewed vigor and energy. It’s also lovely to have a fresh supply of green at a time when the gardens have started going brown. The drought-like state we’ve been in (great pool weather, a tad more trying for the garden inhabitants) has been fine when one has time and resources to keep everything well-watered, but we’ve been lacking both lately.
Still, I’ve managed to keep this little grouping of ferns supplied with enough moisture to maintain their lush growth. A lesson in gardening indoors and out: grouping plants together makes for easier watering, more humidity, and less evaporation. There’s a lesson for humanity in there too, and it’s one that I need to heed more often.
A Sunday afternoon in the garden is a blessing. A daily walkabout the yard is good for the soul. Even when the weather turns sour, it’s vital to get outside, if only for a few moments. In winter, that will prove mostly impossible, and so I indulge in this moment with focused intent and presence.
Summer flowers get all the glory when the sun is bright and blasting down upon the earth, but it’s the quiet backdrop of greenery, such as that afforded by this coral bark maple tree, which creates the real tranquility and calm of the sunny season. Conjuring mottled areas of shade and dappled sunlight, this maple stands at one end of the house, softening its corner with its light green leaves and red-hued bark.
When I pass this tree, I always pause beneath its canopy for a moment, stilling the day and deliberately being present. A stand of lady ferns nods gracefully under its boughs, next to a clump of maidenhair ferns. It is a shaded nook of peace, and a reminder to be mindful no matter what mad rush swirls around us at any given time.
Those moments are vital as we careen all too quickly toward the final month of summer. The days are moving swiftly now, carrying the momentum of sun and fun that once felt so happily endless at the start of the season. Summer ripens in front of us, but we don’t seem to pause enough to notice it happening. By the time we see that the blush is off the rose, it’s practically fall.
There are roses to be found then too, and sometimes they are richer than anything which came up in June. The way to delight is to be open and welcoming and ready to accept whatever beauty might surprise us.
Underneath the leaves of the maple, I take in the summer day at hand.
There was once a time when I couldn’t imagine meditating, much less meditating with a friend by my side, but the world has changed in the past few years, and so it was that Kira and I found ourselves in an afternoon meditation when she was visiting last weekend. Amid the catching up and relaxing, we took a window of ten minutes to do a joint meditation, and it was a nice change-up from the solitary meditation I typically do.
Sitting down on the attic floor, we slowed our breathing, and let the thoughts cross our minds, acknowledging then releasing them. With eyes closed, we continued our slow and deep breathing, pausing the day and making a memory. Being wholly present in the moment sometimes embeds itself in the mind better than writing about it can.
Sharing it with a dear friend brought a new perspective, and a more mindful experience. It made me see the practice from an outsider’s view, and Kira’s questions lent new introspection. It also re-engaged my focus, shaking up what had become a repetitive practice with a jolt of joy.
When Chris visited last week, I showed him how to do some ocean breathing, and rather than listening and paying attention, he chose to take a video of me mid-breath. Where once I would have minded, I chose instead to laugh it off, as my repeated encouragement for him to try daily meditation has thus far been left with less than a shrug. Andy mentioned that meditation is a personal thing, and it’s true that what works for one person may not work for another. And when you have a mind as distracted, unfocused, and racing as most of us do these days, well, no form of meditation may work, especially when the practitioner wants instant change and immediate gratification. My experience with meditation is that the biggest key to successfully implementing it as a part of your life is to be consistent, be organized, and be absolutely dedicated to it, even if you don’t notice a change right away. Not everyone can do that, and I’m not an expert on how to reach people.
To his credit, after a lengthy night swim and some quiet talk, he gave it a shot for a few minutes, and he said it seemed to work better than previous attempts because he was already in a calm space. Here’s hoping he can work it into his daily life, as the ones who seem to likely benefit the most from meditation often find it hardest to do. That’s a tricky conundrum comprising a difficult life.
The leaves won’t ever be as bright and fresh as they are right now, and that is cause for celebration and contemplation. This vibrant shade of chartreuse is not meant to last, and soon it will deepen into a darker green. We celebrate for the same reasons we contemplate: it honors the moment. Inhabiting the present is a gift that we have all been given, but too many of us forget how to use it, if we ever learned in the first place. Most children are born with this understanding – only when they grow up or are taught differently do they lose track of it. Life doesn’t make it easy to hold onto such wisdom either, the way it makes the mundane necessary, the way it distracts and spooks with sparkle and terror.
Yet every year at this time I am so touched by the beauty and freshness of the world that the awe reminds me to be as fully present as possible. If that means slowing down and pausing in the day, no matter what else is going on, then that’s what I try to do.
The splendor of late spring never lasts as long as summer, fall or winter. It’s heartbreaking, and remembered in a different way in the sense that the temporal and fleeting are made more dear and precious because they won’t last. That’s why it’s important to be as present as possible. It’s one of the most important lessons of spring.
Bucking the traditional trajectory that one usually takes by gaining maturity as one ages, my life has unwound in typically-atypical fashion as I find myself getting less and less serious as the years advance. When I was a child, I was super serious about everything. There were moments of laughter and glee, but far more often I was determined and humorless, doggedly trudging through everything that was expected of the oldest son in a strict Catholic Filipino family. All of the responsibility, none of the glory. It served me well, something I’ve realized as I’ve grown into adulthood, when being responsible and consistent are necessary traits to any sort of success or ease in living. I used to look back with tinges of regret that I hadn’t let loose and had more fun when I was a kid, but lately I’ve had a change of heart and perspective, particularly as having fun now carries a sense of reward and release that those with carefree, giddy and non-stop-fun-filled childhoods can only attempt to recapture.
Being silly and goofing off after you’ve earned it is a joy in itself. If you started off goofing off in class and being silly at every turn of youth, and you have the typical results that come from it, you may find yourself having to work a little more and enjoy things a little less. I’ve been fortunate, and had the foresight, to have done the heavy mental lifting as a kid – now it’s all downhill, with less trudging and more giggling. The older I get, the less I know, and the more fun and frivolous the world feels.
“Don’t let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness nor let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free, humorous, and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or “philosophical,” but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved, and healed. What we lack, especially in this culture, is the right undistracted and richly spacious environment of the mind, which can only be created through sustained meditation practice, and in which insights can be given the change slowly to mature and ripen.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’
The day dimmed with the arrival of the storms. Light drained from the sky and our home, as I lowered myself into the lotus position and assumed the first slow breaths of my daily meditation. The darkness at such an early hour recalled winter, and as the light went away so too did the vibrant colors of high spring.
Closing my eyes, I can only hear the menace that swirls outside – heavy drops of rain beating down on street and skylight, gusts of wind tearing at the trees and windows, and, somewhere in the distance, the dull wailing of a siren. Narrowing my own windpipe and assuming the slow and primal ocean breath, my inhalation and exhalation matches the quiet roar of the storm outside. It allows for a soft and gentle focus, letting the worrisome thoughts that typically occupy the mind float quietly away.
In my hands, a small pillar of rose quartz centers the experience – a talisman to occupy the need to hold onto something. It gives me the mental freedom to let go of other things. It’s possible that any object would do – so much of what we believe is simply, well, what we choose to believe. And if that belief comes from a piece of rose quartz, or carnelian, or some smooth unidentified pebble found on a beach, does it really matter? If it helps the practice, if it clears the mind by offering some solace or distraction, it holds meditative value.
Breathing deeply and going through my own intentions, I settle into the space that is the point of meditation – that blank and bright and clear plane where worries and bothersome thoughts are held at bay through a focused lack of focus. Here, where the breath is the only thing that matters, there is a calm and tranquility that is revealed. It’s something that has been here all along, and I choose to believe that it’s something everyone can access if they learn to quell the conditioned mad rush of what it seemingly takes to survive in today’s world. That may be different for everyone, and I can only speak for what has worked for me.
After twenty minutes, my mind is at peace. It’s a sensation that doesn’t remain for long, at least not in that pure and empty expanse where all the things that worried and upset me dissipated in the realm of some other focus and presence. A little bit of that calm, however, lingers, and every day I meditate the sensation gets drawn out further. I find myself able to access it at stressful moments by slipping into the deep ocean breath. It is just enough to take the edge off those times that might otherwise threaten to overwhelm.
The sounds of the storm return to my consciousness. There will always be such storms, just as there will be days of sun and warmth and calm. Here, in the room of meditation, I find a peace and serenity that can be accessed whatever the day might bring.
Holy fuck this work week was a doozy, with the shift of Mercury into retrograde throwing insult on top of injury, but we made it through the wilderness. One of the daily rituals that has proven to be the saving grace at such difficult times is meditation. For twenty minutes a day, I can slip into a state of calm and peace, even when it doesn’t always start out that way. Through deep breathing, focused intentions, and the full twenty minutes, by the end of a meditation session my heartbeat has slowed, my worries and tensions have eased, and all the silly little problems that seemed to insurmountable have melted into their proper place of unimportance.
The other day, I began by ruminating on a litany of work stresses and annoyances. They crossed the mind, prickled with their bothersome nature, flitted about for a bit, then dissipated. Simply acknowledging such things instantly puts them into perspective – I don’t know why, it just does. Allowing those thoughts to enter and then pass, I moved deeper into the meditation, focusing on my intentions, breathing slowly in and even more slowly out. When I found random and worrisome thoughts returning, I started counting the breaths – the simplicity of a numerical focus for each breath re-centered the experience, and soon enough that clear, bright plane that comes with a good meditation was coming into existence. At those moments I feel a lightness, an uncluttered expanse of clarity that counteracts the frenzied chaos and dense concerns of life today.
More wisdom from Dr. Elaine N. Aron’s ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’ comes in her description of how some of us acknowledge the darker parts of our personality, and how studying and understanding these traits is more helpful than whitewashing or wishing them away. Putting on a happy face has never worked well for me, so this makes a great deal of sense. For those who tend to dwell on the rosy side of life without humbly admitting to their own failings and faults, this is a lesson that usually gets missed.
“In getting to know our shadow, the idea is that it is better to acknowledge our unpleasant or unethical aspects and keep an eye on them rather than to throw them out the front door “for good,” only to have them slip in the back when we’re not looking. Usually the people who are the most dangerous and in danger, morally speaking, are those who are certain they would never do anything wrong, who are totally self-righteous and have no idea that they have a shadow or what it is like.” ~ Dr. Elaine N. Aron, ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’
While the idea of being considered a ‘highly sensitive person’ irks me to no end, the book describing such a person resonated strongly with me, and I’m not averse to acknowledging many of the traits of an ‘HSP’. Dr. Elaine N. Aron wrote about HSPs in ‘The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You’ and it’s an interesting read for anyone who has felt socially anxious or inhibited. It explained quite a bit of confusing episodes in my childhood and past, while illuminating ways to combat such issues in the present. Dr. Aron also makes a compelling argument for the importance of such HSPs in the world, especially today. When all seems to be falling apart around us, this may be a good time to consider the quieter and more introspective ways some of us navigate through life.
“I like the way that anthropologists speak of ritual leadership and ritual space. Ritual leaders create for others those experiences which can only take place within a ritual, sacred, or transitional space, set aside from the mundane world. Experiences in this sort of space are transformative and give meaning. Without them life becomes drab and empty. The ritual leader marks off and protects the space, prepares others to enter it, guides them while there, and helps them return to society with the right meaning from the experience. Traditionally, these were often initiation experiences marking life’s great transition – into adulthood, marriage, parenthood, elderhood, and death. Others were meant to heal, to bring a vision or revelation that gave direction, or to move one into closer harmony with the divine.
Today sacred spaces are quickly made mundane. They require great privacy and care if they are to survive. They are as likely to be created in the offices of certain psychotherapists as in churches, as likely to occur in a gathering of men or women dissatisfied with their religion as in a community practicing its traditions, as likely to be signaled by a slight change in topic or tone in a conversation as by the donning of shamanic costume and the outline of a ceremonial circle. The boundaries of sacred space today are always shifting, symbolic, and rarely visible.” ~ Dr. Elaine N. Aron, ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’
With Mercury about to enter retrograde motion, work threatening to overwhelm, and family and fiends keeping me on my toes, this week, like many recent weeks, has been about staying afloat and getting through the damn days. On a recent rainy morning, the sky all dim and overcast, the struggle of merely getting out of bed was more than real, and rather than fight it, I immediately went into what not constitutes my stress-reaction ~ a slow mode of Ujjayi breathing.
Narrowing the wind-pipe, I slowly inhaled, the distant sounds of the ocean replicated as Andy stirred sightly beside me. Pausing for the slightest bit at the crest, I then slowly exhaled, taking about twice as long as the inhale – about seven seconds in and fourteen seconds out. Beginning the day in this manner, and continuing this style of breathing as I prepared for the office, would set the tone and see me through whatever the world had in store. It’s a benefit of consistent meditation to be able to slide into such a mode whenever a bit of calm is needed, and I was suddenly grateful for the practice.
