I love to meditate. Establishing an ongoing meditation practice is probably the most important and most satisfying thing I've done to change my life. I meditate every morning for at least 30 minutes and it sets the tone for my whole day. It also helps me to clear away the cobwebs and go deep to find the real "me" that is buried under all of the personas that are perceived by others: Mom, Grandma, Sister, Friend, student, etc. When I am in touch with who I really am, the quality of my life improves.
I also try to incorporate a lesson every morning, most often by listening to a guided meditation with my favorite meditation teacher, Davidji. The other day he talked about how sometimes we set an intention to achieve our vision only to be upset or confused when that vision doesn't show up the way we thought it would, or the way we wanted it to. He said that when that happens, it is helpful to meditate on the desire for clarity. Often all we really need is to look at our vision from a different angle to see the perfection of the form it came in. So I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and meditated on the word "clarity" for 30 minutes. What came up were the words gratitude, acceptance and awake.
Gratitude: I am grateful beyond words that I am living the life I always wanted, in a place I love, doing what makes me happy, and surrounded by so much beauty it sometimes makes my heart hurt. Am I exactly where my vision said I would be? No. My vision was to return to the little town I had lived in before, where there are sidewalks, and stores you can walk to, and a village green with a gazebo just like in the movies. Where I ended up was 2 1/2 miles outside of town in the country with no sidewalks, no stores, and cows for neighbors, but I wouldn't trade those killer sunsets for anything, nor would I trade the smell of green fields and plowed dirt in the early morning mist, or the birdsong that serenades me while I write.
Acceptance: I accept that the lifestyle I chose will not make me rich, nor will it even make me comfortable by society's standards, but I am happy, I have everything I need, and all that I really need anyway are the things of the soul, like contentedness, peace, integrity, authenticity and love. I also accept that with the absence of a vehicle for a while, I must learn to ask for help, something I have not been very good at for most of my life, but a lesson I've needed to learn, and to be okay with it as well. Accepting what is can be a most humbling experience.
Awake: When I stopped long enough to see what I did have instead of what I didn't have anymore, I began to see more amazing things then I could have imagined. No, the garden of my dreams did not materialize, but how awesome to watch wildflowers pop up in unexpected places, as beautiful as any in the garden shop, or to see a spider spinning the most beautiful art that shone with crystals when the morning sun shone on the dew drenched web. Being awake to what was right in front of me let me see that Mother Nature had everything in hand, thank you very much, and it was okay for me to just sit back and enjoy it without thinking I could improve on it.
The thing about clarity is that by looking at my vision from a different angle, I could see that all the things that I truly wanted were gifts for my soul and they came in the forms that my soul could recognize instead of my monkey mind. Those gifts have translated into a new direction for my writing, and a new "clarity" for my work as well as my home. It's like having an early Christmas. As my greatest teacher once taught: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." That goes for our lives as well as for our gardens.
And so it is.
P.S. This blog post is dedicated to the memory of my beloved teacher, Dr.Wayne Dyer, who left us all too soon.
