meditation

Over and over again we will have to do this. We will forget. Farther down the path, tomorrow, or perhaps later today, we will forget about stillness. And when we do, we will have lost the thread. Without this central practice, none of it will make any sense.

We're telling ourselves a story about who we are and what life is, and we're confusing this story with reality.

Imagine that you're passing a lazy afternoon at a sidewalk café on a mild spring day, sipping your drink, chatting with a couple of friends, and watching the cars go by. That's easy. In fact, it's effort-less: the cars just go wherever they go, and you're happily unem-ployed. But now suppose that for some reason you suddenly fall under the delusion

A lot of meditation is just showing up for what we have, and there is joy in that. It’s diferent from the kind of happi- ness that comes from getting what you wanted. It’s a joy that doesn’t have a good reason. It’s a joy that allows you to be sad or upset, because you’re alive in the midst of it.

But, meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.

We so routinely look outside of ourselves for answers that when we turn to look within, it can feel foreign. It can feel challenging, confusing, scary, and painful.

It’s still possible to get caught up in habitual patterns of the thinking mind and the compulsive body. But eventually, there is a remembering, a coming home. The mind stops, the body quiets, the heart opens. When this happens, in that natural stillness and wakefulness, everything is complete and nothing more is needed. There is no me, no

If anxiety, anger, or any other feeling comes along and is just some mild atmosphere in the background of your experience, don't worry about it. But if it's so strong that it stomps up to the foreground and demands to be addressed, note how it feels ... physically. Neutrally, nonjudgmentally, matter-of-factly, allow yourself to experience the