Acknowledging what is seems simple, but it continues to be a revelation that each moment is as important as the next. My practice is to open to it mindfully. Easy? Yes. No. The valence I bring to what I’m experiencing gives me a sense of aliveness and keeps me involved and interested, but sadness is sadness, as is grief and joy, boredom, and anger. Cold is cold. Weather changes and so do conditions, which affect my moods and actions. Today, I found myself frustrated because I could not meet with our lawyer to make changes to the will for my husband and me. I had trouble entering the Google meeting room, and she had trouble with Zoom. I’ve had technological difficulties with the computer before and stayed calm, but not today. Only later did I realize that what really upset me was contemplating death and the loss of my husband, rather than technology. David, the lawyer, and I finally figured out a way to meet that worked for both of us, but it required flexibility and persistence. Once we were together, I could not calm down immediately and had to leave the discussion for a few minutes to gather myself together and not cry. Estate planning is important. We wanted to include our dog in our will and make some changes to our personal representatives. Talking about it brought me closer to its inevitability and my fear of loss and separation. Just like winter and the onset of frigid temperatures, it happens. We can prepare for it as much as possible, yet its timing, conditions, and consequences are unknown. Denial doesn’t work.
When I began meditating, I did so because I wanted to change, I felt unhappy, and I thought that meditating would help me feel better about myself and improve the conditions of my life. With time, effort, good people, support, and dedication, it has, but it was not the effect of fairy dust and involved facing what is true with an open heart and mind. I have learned how precious it is to stay awake and meet the moment fully, however it may be.
I can’t separate myself from the pain of others, and I am having to limit my intake of the news. It’s worrisome. I find myself getting teary at acts of kindness. The more I meditate, the more I realize how little I know and how sensitive I have become. What I observe and how I respond are a bit like the weather; they vary. Conditions make a difference. The snow resting on the limb of a tree is beautiful, but if it’s too heavy, it snaps the branch. I don’t want to snap, so I ask, " What is needed now? What is too much? What is too little? Knowing my time is limited, I continue to examine how I am using it. This means facing limitations and examining the reality of my wishes.
Meditation brings me joy, and it has also increased my awareness of harm and how painful I find it to open to the world as it is right now. I have been realizing that I walk within a certain bubble of expectations and experience, which has been protective but limiting. I feel very fortunate that I can lead meditation groups and continue teaching mindfulness. It keeps me honest and helps me live my practice. The people who come teach me as well as I teach them. My world expands as we practice together to
quiet the mind and open the heart, and support each other in facing the unknown. There are many questions and no one answer to act consciously with wisdom rather than from anger or fear.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
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