Thoughts Arise

I am among the 35% of people in this world who live on more than 10 dollars a day. Among the lucky 6% who fit this criteria from my country of origin. I am one individual among the 7.5 billion who are alive today; 7% of the humans to have ever been born, living in an age of unprecedented peace and prosperity. But gratitude is an emotion that is seldom invoked by rational thought. When I believed in God, my thankfulness was directed at an entity. In awe of that towering ego, every moment of life could be felt as a blessing. And there was an intuitive grasp of the infinite that cannot be found in very large numbers. Does gratitude require a subject and an object? Or does it emerge from a momentary grasp of that concept we call infinity? When something vast eclipses our suffering. When we find release from the struggle of thought and taste the exuberant freedom of mind. Look up at the night sky. Let go of the limits you impose on your sense of self; let go of the idea that you have a head...

 Last night, while walking to another room, I felt a sense of peace descend on me. It was a relief after a day tinged by troubling news from around the world. I paused in the corridor to let my mind rest in the present. I looked for my head, and finding nothing, my view became expansive. My two year old daughter was finishing a shower with her mum. Soon, she would dash out of the door looking for me. I felt a smile emerge out of the expectation. The warm sensation of it spread to my face; a pleasant tug around the cheeks, a fuzziness at the bottom of my eyes. I heard her squeals and the patter of feet. And then she appeared running at full speed, forming an arc that just about avoided a collision with the wall, and ran straight into my embrace. Her arms around my neck, the velvet of her cheek against mine, her giggles vocalizing our glee. A moment lived.   Photo from www.freepik.com  

This morning as I gazed out the window, I imagined seeing the sky with new eyes. Consider being prevented from seeing the sky, until its memory begins to fade. If you then saw the vibrant hues of a sunrise what would you feel? Perhaps, seeing such splendor, you would be struck with awe. Not just by the beauty, but because of the magnitude. I felt as if I could sense the virtually infinite volume between me and the visual ceiling of the sky. It seemed to press down on me. It was not an oppressive force, but it was an irresistible one. It pushed me down, shrinking the ego to a speck, yet filling my heart to the brim. Oh, such joy to see majesty in its undiminished form!   Photo from www.freepik.com  

All experience occurs in the present. We add a sense of continuity with our imperfect memories and the concept of time. Sometimes a new object or experience captivates us and immerses us fully in the now . But in a meditative state it can seem that this novel quality exists in every moment; a newness in everything that is noticed. Every moment of experience has the potential for new sensations, thoughts, and shifts in perception. All of these arise on their own, without any effort on our part. With an appreciation of the passing of time, and of experience arising within each moment, comes a sense of flow . The contents of our mind are noticed, transfix us for a while, and are pushed aside by the next thing to arise. This arising of experience, the flow of perception and thoughts, this space in which the world appears is the feeling of being. What I am trying to describe is a felt state, not just a conceptual one. When one can shift perspective to notice the world this way, e...

In today’s meditation a poignant emotion took hold of me. I remembered friends that touched me deeply. Our lives have taken us far from each other, yet that old familiarity lingers. I felt nostalgia, but it took on a different hue as my awareness detached from the stream of memories. I realised that at some point in my life these cords of familiarity might pull me back. Or maybe they won't. The mood became less covetous and more joyous. Treasured moments come and go. If life continues, I will someday feel nostalgia for the present as well. Even our deepest connections are transient, and with anything of value comes the inevitability of loss. Our mind is in a state of flow on every scale of time. Pause for this moment and feel the rush of life that has led up to it from the last few seconds to decades past. We can’t stop or manage the flow. The only salve is to learn to let go.     Photo from gracecirocco.com  

I once believed in God. Surrounded by people who shared, affirmed, and enforced the belief, my faith became almost unquestionable. Religion gave me a glimpse of something. Not in the prescribed prayers, but in the moments spent searching my soul. Not through its practices, but by giving in to the magnificence of the world. Not through the words of scripture, but by contemplating infinity. I remember sitting at the edge of my bed, peering into the rain and becoming mesmerised by the spectacle. Emotion overwhelmed me, tears ran down my face, and I felt deeply connected to every raindrop falling from the sky, and every leaf that they touched.  I knew what caused rain, but my conceptual understanding of reality was swept away by the intricacy of subjective experience. I wept in awe and gratitude. It was one of the most profound moments in my life. I went through a phase where I searched for insights in holy scripture. But what I found there destroyed my faith. It was a myopic te...

Meditation Log April 18, 2020: I was on a run that hadn’t gone well. I wanted to attempt a personal best, but the wind was against me and I couldn’t keep up the pace. It felt like conscious effort at every step. I switched my watch from pace to distance, and on the last kilometer decided to let go. I dropped the goal, ignored the tug of discontentment, and let go of conscious effort. My feet kept moving and my breath joined the rhythm. The world pulled me onward and my chin lifted up. I consciously tried to move my sense of self down my body, towards the sensations of heart and breath. My vision seemed to shift lower too. Soon, the boundary of the top of my head disappeared. My vision became an extension of me; the observer. I was now running with the feeling of being shaped like an octahedron, the bottom starting around my cheekbones, expanding outwards, and shooting up into the sky. “Why an octahedron?” a thought asked. And the shape responded with change. It became a...