Who am I?

Alongside meditation, here is a practice to make you think! and to consider exactly what a human being is.  A friend said that he had been asking himself this question every day, really letting it sink in and turn it over in the light of what he really thought he was. So, I am following his advice and starting this morning and asking the question as I get dressed and check my appearance in the mirror, it is clear that I am not what I see.  So, a start has been made.  Which of these is the real one for starters?

an early bird

When she arrived this morning, I was still getting ready but as her time is so short on the way to work, we went to meditate in the garden room.  We are now about a fortnight into this pattern; she comes early or at the end of her day to restart her meditation practice.  I had said when she got married that  loving her as I do, I wished her every good in the world and that included helping her set up her home, wedding dresses and wedding parties, but that the most enduring gift would be meditation because that gift would last beyond lifetimes.  She tried then but there was so much happening, so much to entice and distract, but now it seems different, and this is a mature decision.  Today, we seemed to arrive at a real peace with much less effort and the sense of her real nature being complete and peaceful and of the relationship of mother and daughter disappearing into that singleness was a lovely thing to start the day with.

stop the mind? or just see it for what it is

Meditating with 4 young girls this morning in a school where there is a rising tide of excitement, of communication, of people working and general noise, this analogy suddenly helped.  We imagined a river in flow and then imagined taking a glass of water out of the river to drink.  The water in the glass is immediately quite still and thirst quenching.  To sit with the whirling sound of life round you, the only effort we had to make was to concentrate on our own centre, and let the whirl and flow go on around.  They found it easy and we all found it made us feel better.

passing by

Passing by houses which were occupied by people we knew on our way to a wedding, we thought about how they seemed to have belonged to the owners at the time.  In our minds we could see those old owners coming and going, gardening, cleaning, entertaining, drawing the curtains and going to bed there feeling that that very house and place was theirs.  We feel like that about our house but in fact, the houses outlive us so it would be much more accurate to say that they own us!  Meditating on the unchanging amid the changing world alters your vision of how things are; they all seem much less convincing but also much more beautiful in their own right.  It makes me realise how I take things for granted, seldom think how blessed I am, don't you find that too?
See this house, it is called Houghton Hall; someone once thought they owned it and then they died and it belonged to someone else and so on and so on until today when someone else has all the work of owning it.  I think it has owned the people and by its huge and imposing being has had all of them working hard to keep it alive!

Houghton Hall is not my house! Someone thought this was their house once and then it passed on to someone else. 

facing facts

In the newspaper today, a celebrity says she forgives but doesn't forget and if she wants to get someone back she'll get them back even if revenge takes years!  Meditation might help here!  If I were to put something on my wish list for a result from meditation it would be to harbour no bad thoughts about anyone.  If the mind ceased to associate names with past actions and resolved itself into a peaceful state, not only would life be easier but what we call death might be easier too.

broadband goes, electricity off, what do you do?

Just as if to test yesterday's blog about determination, the tests start arriving one after the other.  It is as if the controller has pressed fast forward and I find myself in a farce not a serious play. I have a string of appointments, I get up early to complete the relevant tasks and I trip trip trip over each thing, the electricity is on the blink, the broadband wire has been chewed by a mouse so those important e mails can't go and they were so urgent! my morning meditation is about to be shortened, even cancelled!  But I remember what I wrote last night and there is no getting away from the fact that the words are there in black and white.  And my morning new meditator is here so the test is do I believe all this stuff about activity or do I believe that stillness is the reality.  I meditate! and when I get back all those things are patiently waiting for attention.

getting serious!

There are so many reasons to meditate but there is one problem, meditation takes effort, it isn't just an easy peasy way to be relaxed, it is a discipline.  The only reason for any discipline is having a goal, so for instance, dieting is to lose weight, exercising is to get fit and working is to provide cash for the household.  Meditating is to become still and focussed and more important to become free from the world of duality.  Of course just a little meditation will take you just a little way and you will feel better and more relaxed but are you up for the longer line? Read on tomorrow and the next days and see if I can make a good case for the discipline of meditation.