Today is a rather short blog post. I attended a day long meditation retreat this weekend, which was a wonderful experience. I have been practicing now every day for roughly the last three months, however, the day long retreat gave me the wonderful….and challenging experience to just sit and be for an entire day. What I’ve come to realize more and more is how overly concerned I am by outside voices and opinions. I suppose it’s hard not to be with the constant amount of information overload we have in our daily lives.
Thoughts kept popping into my head as I sat. These thoughts proved to be meditations in themselves. ‘Where does my fear come from?’ ‘What is my true intention in this life?’ ‘What am I if I am not my thoughts?’ There was no particular need or desire to have answers to these questions and in fact, it was quite nice to just be with them.
Some may feel that meditation is not for them and it is too spiritual. I think that’s just getting into semantics. It doesn’t have to be a spiritual experience (although it certainly can be). Meditation is nothing more than sitting and just being. On the other side, it’s also a journey – a lifelong journey of peering within and discovering the essence of who you really are. Take the time to just sit. It doesn’t have to be for an extended period of time. Even a couple of minutes a day will do. Have no other intention that just being with yourself. See what happens.
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
-Mary Oliver
