It is not unusual for a new student to enter the practice of meditation with a goal to empty the busy mind and enter a state of bliss and relaxation. While this may be a delightful side effect to mindful living, it is sure to be a temporary state. Instead, mindfulness and meditation help set favorable conditions for pleasant thoughts, sensations and emotions to arise while building the resilience to experience whatever is happening in every moment. As my teacher, Jonathan Foust says, “Meditation will make you feel better.” It will make you feel anger better. Frustration better. Doubt better. Jealousy better. And so on.
In A Lamp in the Darkness, Jack Kornfield writes,
“If you can sit quietly after difficult news;
if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm;
if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy;
If you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate;
if you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink of a pill;
if you can always find content just where you are;
you are probably a dog.”
When we fight and fix and control, we become tight and closed to possibility. And something will go wrong anyway. We become, as a Tibetan teacher says, a bundle of tense muscles, defending our existence. Perhaps instead of trying to get everything right with balance and poise, our challenge is this,
“If the world will not go away then the great discipline seems to be the ability to make an identity that can live in the midst of everything without feeling beset.” – David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
The use of an anchor in mindfulness practice allows us to work with the uncertainty of not being able to control our experience. We can focus on our breath for one or two cycles and then we become distracted. It is failure practice.
How we respond to our situation, both in meditation and in life, is the one true thing we can control. So we gently guide our attention back to the anchor and begin again, dwelling in the midst of everything.
November is a busy month at Center For Self-Care including Mindful Dads Meeting (11/14), Men Sitting By A Fire (11/15) and Mindful Habit Change (11/20). Join us to practice together.
Center for Self-Care 
2 thoughts on “In the Midst of Everything”