It is amazing how obvious something is as you are
able to be more present. Saturday morning when I stopped to pick up my friend Claudia to
drive to a three-day silent meditation retreat, I made one last potty stop,
using her husband's bathroom. We got into the car, settled in, and as I backed out of the
driveway, I teased her that I like his bathroom other than the fact that his
toilet paper rolls the wrong way. I did not yet realize that the message of
the retreat was already being revealed to me....
The teachers of the retreat help students work with the practice
of Vipassana (mindfulness or insight) meditation. As a prolific writer, it is a
miracle that I can limit myself to just a few sentences on the tiny pages in a 3 inch by
4 inch notebook. On Sunday afternoon, I made the first note in my retreat journal:
"If I were not judging right now, what might I be experiencing?"
The toilet paper roll came to mind—along with a flood of
pain and the thought that what I might be experiencing if I was not judging, was my desire to be
"right." Even toilet paper direction had a right and wrong
connotation in my mind. It was as though every act held life or death implications.
Right
and wrong are not like perfect pitch, they are like relative pitch. Close
enough is good enough. It is important you are moving in the direction of... Be
sure to set your intention. Correct and incorrect belongs to the mundane. Words tumbled onto the page as relief
flowed in along with the welcomed pure awareness. I could see the past simply as what I was
to experience.
Another note in my retreat journal: "If we have a
preference, that can be a place of stuckness."
I began to notice how deeply connected that old fear of doing
something wrong had been connected to the tension in my shoulders and the tightness
in my abdomen. As I saw the old conditioning for what it was, I began to set
my intention to not be in tension, choosing instead to experience ease in my body, mind, and spirit, by letting grace flow in. My shoulders
relaxed and my belly softened. What an amazing relief....
We were instructed to notice how much even our sensations
of pleasant and unpleasant are influenced by our perceptions which have been conditioned. Barbara said if you feel something
on your skin and you see that it is a fly, the sensation is likely to be
considered unpleasant. However, if you see that what is walking on you is a
butterfly, you are much more likely to consider delight in the tickling of that touch. As is often the case, you have the opportunity to practice experiencing the truth you are integrating...
This morning, as I was immersed in the tasks around
catching up, I began to feel that old pattern of stress in my shoulders and
tightness in my belly starting to reassert itself. I remembered hearing a teaching about the one who is aware of tension is not tense. I set that intention to see that bigger picture, and I began to ponder that idea of right
and wrong applying only to the mundane world. When I am putting a phone number in the
customer profile, if I put in a 7 where there should have been an 8, I have put in a WRONG number.
If I decide to buy this car over another make and model, is one choice right
and another wrong? Perhaps if I am buying a Corvette and I can only pay for a Ford
Focus, that may not the best choice, but notice how clearly you are able to see that idea
of relative pitch.
Barbara shared about having gone into a local soda shop
with a friend of color. This was about 50 years ago, in the old world of hatred and biggotry we lived
in back then. Barbara and her friend sat down at the counter and Barbara said,
"We would each like a coke." She thought things were going well as
she watched the soda jerk turn and draw two glasses of cola, but when
he came back over to the counter where the two young girls were sitting, rather than set the glasses on the counter for them, he poured
the ice cold contents over each girls' head! A riot broke out and Barbara was arrested.
With her in the cell was an elderly black woman (elderly to Barbara's then twenty-something, but probably no more than fifty). The woman commented to Barbara about how angry she was.
"Yes, I am angry. You should be angry, too. Aren't you angry?" Barbara snapped.
"Of course, I am feeling angry, but I am also
feeling love. They are so afraid..." came the woman's life-changing reply.
As Mother Teresa said, "If we have no
peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."
I don't know if you will agree or disagree with all of
this, but one more note of truth in my journal worth remembering: "Nothing
is ever finished."
