Today I’m sitting in meditation retreat. I absolutely love the silence.
Before I learned how to question my thinking and get some little space
or distance from it, I had more of a love-hate relationship with silence.
Now it seems that my experience of silence and emptiness matches
my willingness to be with my own thinking, to welcome every little
petty or mean thought “like it’s a little child” as Katie says.
The first time I decided to try to meditate I was about 18 years old. I
could hardly stand sitting there for five minutes. My mind really did
NOT feel like a friendly universe.
Now, it feels like the world is downright magical. And because I am
not so tortured with my thoughts (now the torture chamber is only
open on Mondays in the winter rather than a year-round resort) I look forward
to meditation with joy and anticipation. Like I’m going on an adventure.
Truly amazing!
I share with you all this poem by Rumi today, with no more of my own words:
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight.
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food,
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
——Rumi
Love, Grace