Thursday 14 May 2015

Taking out the Trash - A Way to Forgiveness

For three months earlier this year I was in southern India effectively living in solitude. Meaning that I did not talk to anyone except for the essentials of maintenance. For many days I would hardly see anyone nor speak when I did. It becomes a state of mind eventually. Within that I was practising my meditation every day. I’d practise between maybe two and four hours each day. I did not have a specific routine because I discovered the enormous benefit of solitude. That is the feeling, knowledge, experience of continuity that went on unbroken all the time. So I sat when I felt like it, which was usually three to five times a day.

I might be working on a project from time to time, but in the background, unbroken and undisturbed by the activity, was the awareness of a thread that ran from one meditation sitting to the next. That tended to level out expectation and increase faith in an ongoing process that was looking after itself, if only I did not disturb it. Sometimes I would wait before sitting because I could feel something coalescing and I would have a notion of what direction the next sitting would take and let it take clearer form - because awareness is intelligent, in a different way from my intelligence. Watching for the direction is not the same as expectation, but expectation can be mistaken for awareness. Think about that.