Evening Meditation
So interesting to notice how these things can live in the body. It’s not just a thought or an idea, this true heart sense, or even heartache. It’s visceral, somatic, it lives in the chest with an energy all of it’s own. Hollow, spacious, a weight that bears down as I breathe. And when I sit with it, it has depth and dimension that goes beyond me, or maybe farther within. It radiates up the back of my neck and into my skull, a tingling that moves through my arms and into the tips of my feet. It’s telling me to run, maybe fight. When I turn my attention to it, some part of me finds words. ‘Desperation’, ‘betrayal’, ‘dissonance’, ‘disbelief’, ‘danger’. It wants to find other words. ‘Compassion’, ‘kindness’, ‘hope’, ‘equality’. This dance of thought and feeling as I seek centeredness, as I hold my chest and work harder for air.
Maybe a step back, noticing the narratives. Some child part of me that wants to believe the world is not driven by fear, division, hate, arrogance, power. It wants the magic found in things unknown, the innocence of believing in the inherent good of others. It’s searching for laughter, love, joy, connection.
The world is just a mystical place, and we are all traveler’s here, wanting to know each other and explore the mysteries of this place and time we have landed in. In an infinite realm of possibility across a sea of stars, what have we come here to learn, and what a profound joy to recognize that in another’s eyes.
And further still. There is space between the stories, so much so that it finds places where there is true silence. Fleeting, simple moments, a lifetime playing out in front of us… it sees without labels. Loss falls away, knows only connectedness. Sorrow is just one note in a beautiful song, one that sings of resilience and overcoming… the strength of spirit born in fire and upheaval, the unique gifts of language which become some continuous bloodstream of generations that learn and grow. From a distance, there is expansion and contraction, like the breath. An intake of life, an exhaling of that which no longer serves, but instead of moments, it knows it through the cadence of lifetimes.
And even more space still. And here there is presence without judgement, a witness to the art of life unfolding. Nothing that comes before, nothing after. Just an eternal now. An unending love for all that you’ve gone through, all you have endured, the beauty of your ascension, the pain of your descent, all happening right here, right now, a joyful paradox of creation seeing itself as separate.
I return to the breath, to the hum and glow of my monitors, the soft sound of a fan running, wind blowing just outside my window, the carpet beneath my feet. Someone talking in the parking lot. And the lingering thread of a message. “Do not fight against that which you fear. Be that which you love. Be open to what you would see more of. Be generous when you speak of it. They will hear it in your voice, see it in your eyes, know it by your heart. And that is enough. Find each other, and the way forward becomes clear.”