Category Archives: Meditation

Saving My Sanity

creativity, Meditation, tinkering,

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats

I don’t have to tell you that the world has descended into chaos. We are well beyond dumpster fire, sailing into uncharted territory where there are most certainly large dragons dwelling.

I understand that it can be challenging to find any kind of peace in the midst of this nightmare. One practice that has helped me to quiet the external and internal noise is crafting. It may seem frivolous to suggest that something as simple as doodling a cat or crocheting a washcloth can ease the tension, but it works for me. I lose myself in the process of creation, a kind of meditation.

I know it works for others as well as I participate in two monthly craft groups. Some months, we work together on a specific project. Other months, we bring our own works in progress. There is food and fellowship, with a focus on the personal rather than the political. These groups spur my creativity and sense of community, giving me courage to try new things without having to be perfect.

March is National Craft Month and a great excuse to add a bit of crafting to your life, whether you pursue your lifelong passion or decide to learn how to do something new. Hoopla, a digital service provider for libraries, is celebrating with a curated collection of resources from books to television shows. You can access the list even without an account; check with your public library to see if they offer access to Hoopla. Your library may also have crafting kitso check out as part of their Library of Things. My library hosts monthly crafting sessions.

I make crafting a daily part of my day. I share a bit on social media but mostly just among friends. Online groups are not always as kind as they might be. (See The Craft Police.) Here’s a sample: I used washi tape to create a collage.

Washi Tape Collage

Finding Community

community, Meditation, Vision, ,

My inbox was a source of solace and inspiration this morning:

Jose Vilson provided perspective on this time and the need to grieve but also to continue to join together with others to fight for our values in his blog post, Don’t Obey in Advance.

The Center for Action and Contemplation is hosting a Virtual Sit Meditation next week:

In this space we will gather in simple presence, bearing witness to each other and to the complex realities we face without needing to resolve them. In stillness, we will honor our shared humanity and the grace that exists, even amid our collective uncertainty. Together, we’ll pause to breathe, reflect, and embrace whatever feelings we bring, knowing that we are not alone.

We invite you to join us on YouTube for a time to be together in stillness and reflection on Tuesday, November 12 from 7:30 – 8:00am PT (3:30 – 4:00pm GMT).

Join the Livestream

Dan Harris, founder of Ten Percent Happier and now out on his own, has been hosting meditation get togethers every day this week over on Substack. The next one is at 11 AM today. He will continue to be a source of wisdom and comfort to the community.

This song has been going through my head:

Practicing Imperfection

Meditation,

Ten Percent Happier, my go-to meditation app for many years, started the Imperfect Meditation Challenge today. Designed for both novice and veteran meditators, the focus is on dispelling the notion that there is something like perfect meditation. Bad is good, according to this morning’s hosts, Matthew Hepburn and Cara Lai. The latter, by the way, completed a year-long silent meditation retreat. Plenty of time to practice and consider ideas about perfection and imperfection. They challenge us with the Zen koan idea that imperfect is better than perfect. They will be joined by Dawn Mauricio as the challenge progresses.

Lately, my own meditation has not looked at all like the pictures of people sitting peacefully, eyes closed, breath steady, zoned out of the world. I might start a guided meditation with that intention only to find myself rising from my chair and doing stuff while I listen, usually chores like feeding the cat or watering the plants or putting away the laundry. All of these can be meditative if done intentionally, focused on the present action and not telling stories or going down rabbit holes. Of course, those will happen and the moment we recognize those patterns, we begin again.

This morning’s lesson was followed by a five-minute meditation with Pascal Auclair that included a meditative activity I had not encountered before. It’s easy so consider giving it a try:

Start by thinking about rubbing your hands together. Picture it in your mind but do not do it. Spend a few seconds with the image and idea, thinking about what it feels like. Then, physically do it. Stop thinking about it and rub your hands together. So, what does it feel like? And, more importantly, how the action different from the thought? Maybe you thought about the action for a moment before you complete it: my hands are cold, and I am going to rub them together. But then you actually do it. Thinking about it is not going to warm up your hands.

In a similar way, our normal thought patterns can create a disconnect from the present moment and create a veil of negativity around our actions. Perhaps we find ourselves dreading the chores that await us, struggling with the fitted sheets or cleaning out the stinky cat food bowl. We may hurry through them, further frustrating the process, maybe letting our minds wander down other paths and rabbit holes. If we can move into the activity without that veil, put the thoughts aside, and just do the action, we may find a moment of peacefulness. Who knew fitted sheets could provide an object for meditation?

The Imperfect Meditation Challenge is free, and you can sign up at the website. If you find you want to explore the Ten Percent app further, just message me, and I can provide a guest pass for 30 days.

Happy meditating!

Yes, And

books, Meditation, Sharon Salzberg, , ,

I am reading a wide variety of spiritual literature including Yes, And…Daily Meditations, a collection of Richard Rohr’s writings and Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom by Sharon Salzberg. Rohr is a Franciscan priest; Salzberg is a Buddhist meditation teacher. Both of them play with the idea of “yes, and” as a spiritual practice.

Rohr’s idea of “Yes, And…” is expressed in this essay from 2015:

Jesus told his Jewish followers to be faithful to their own tradition. He did this by strongly distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials, and then pushed it even further. The only absolute essential is union with God. We see this creative tension throughout Matthew’s Gospel, but perhaps no place more clearly than in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Then he goes on with six repetitions of the same phrase: “You have heard it said . . . but I say. . . .”  I call this the “yes/and” approach: yes the law, and there is something more, which is “the real and deep purpose of that very law.” For both Jesus and Paul law is never an end in itself. (This is Paul’s primary point in both Romans and Galatians! How could we miss that?)

If you read to the end of the essay, you will get a real flavor of Richard Rohr, a compelling spiritual thinker and writer I have only come to know this year.*

That’s what the Spirit teaches you to do, too: read the same scriptures, but now with a deeper understanding of their revolutionary direction—“that all may be one, you in me and I in you” (John 17:21). Today we are recognizing that that many Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Sufis, and Native religions seem to live this divine unity much better than many who call themselves Christians. This embarrassing and obvious truth can only be denied by people afflicted with deliberate blindness.

In the introduction to the book of meditations, he continues this idea of being part of the past but always moving forward: the yes connects Rohr to “the entire force field of the Holy Spirit” while the and is his addition to that field, “that bit of the Great Truth of the Gospel to which we each have our own access.” Rohr believes others can also have an and when it comes to spiritual truths, and I think that gets him in trouble with the authorities now and then.

In her most recent book, Real Life, Salzberg suggests “yes, and” as a way into gratitude practice that might help us see it as more authentic, especially on those days when we aren’t feeling particularly grateful for anything. Forcing feelings we don’t have can be problematic. Salzberg offers adopting the “yes, and” approach from improv theater as a way to deal with the often ambivalent, contradictory places we find ourselves in life. In improv, “yes, and” means that the actor must accept the scenario as given and then move forward. You don’t have to agree, you don’t have to like it, but you must accept it and, only then, can you move on.

*Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987. I recently subscribed to the daily meditations and was pleasantly surprised to see Rohr quoting extensively from Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo williams who I know through my meditation practice.