Mindful of The Way

We can’t say that life was a rehearsal, for some other real show. We are stuck with our aches and pains. That said, at some point, we have to stop and actually work on ourselves. We need some experience of a breakthrough, a gap, or a space, where we can sit and experience our lives but also see through our preoccupations and projections and uplift ourselves. Every one of us has opportunities to do this. – after Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

There is no such thing as an “experienced” meditator. Meditation is meditation, nothing more, nothing less than recognizing the “is-ness” of what is. Each unfolding moment-by-moment is an opportunity.

“The deeper I descend into myself, the more I find (Creation) at the heart of my being.” – Teilhard de Chardin

“...that true Self is not separate from, or even different from, the Source of Being...Which is not to dismiss the reality of this same loving presence being fully alive in our external world... Our purpose for opening the door inward is to help us know and claim who we are so we can more completely join with (Creation) in expressing this love in every part of our external world.” – Joyce Rupp. Open the Door: A Journey to the True Self (Sorin Books, Notre Dame, IN, 2008).

Our truest Self and Source are found and experienced within the gaps and spaces we allow for ourselves many times each day, often without awareness. Mindfulness is about paying attention to those moments, gaps and spaces. The easiest is the recognition of the pause between each breath. Not unlike eddies in the stream, we discover our thoughts, coming and going. We are not those thoughts, nor the voices we may hear in our head. We are the listener; we are the observer of those thoughts like flotsam and jetsam.