Occasionally I need to give myself a shot in the arm for my meditation practice. Sometimes my practice just feels dull and like a task I have to push through. But I have found if I occasionally attend a longer meditation retreat, I get reminded of what it is that meditation provides and why I want to keep up this practice . So, off I went this week-end for a retreat which worked its magic on me!
At this retreat, I picked up a book by the late Ram Dass, “Polishing the Mirror” and I’ve found his recounting of his life and his stories about what meditation can do for us to be engaging and convincing! He talks about meditation as a “pilgrimage into your own heart” that takes time and attention. And he also talks about the idea of being a witness to your own mind, thoughts, feelings… and how we need to have what he calls “unbearable compassion” for what we find inside ourselves.
He compares meditation to women in remote Indian villages who must go daily to fetch water in a jug which they balance on their heads as they walk home – talking and laughing with friends. They journey home gossiping and laughing but they never forget the jar of water on their heads. They don’t forget their main purpose. Just so, we might carry around our own meditation practice with us more or less all the time as we go through our daily life. Just reminding ourselves what is important.
So that’s my book report for this week! I wish you well in your spiritual practice, whatever it is. And let us all be reminded that it takes time and attention and commitment to follow through on our practice --- and that it is this time and attention which is part of the goal. To stick with the pursuit of journeying into the center of our own heart.
I do also recommend the practice of occasionally attending a longer meditation (or yoga or writing or whatever your practice is) retreat as a way of renewing your commitment to yourself and to your own heart.
I honor the place in you
Where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you
Of love, of light, of truth, of peace.
I honor the place in you
Where if you are in that place in you and
I am in that place in me,
There is only one of us.
Namaste.
~ Ram Dass