Observations from a meditation class.

In the ten years that Peter Radcliffe of Skillful Mind has been my meditation mentor, I have listened to many, many hours of other meditators report on their meditation practice. Something that really came to my attention in this weeks group was how often people report on a lack of motivation, feeling like their practice had taken a step back, or how relieved they are that they are out of that funk and back to feeling fully engaged again.

The word that kept resounding in my mind was ‘tension’. This year I have chosen to examine my response to the world through the lens that nature doesn’t make mistakes. Choosing to believe that statement is true, and knowing that this dip in progress or motivation is experienced by almost every meditator I have met, what then is the purpose of that dip? 

Tension. This advance and retreat that repeats itself over and over, creating tension between progress and loss. Push/pull. Push/pull. Very often there is a judgement from the meditator who is reporting the retreat, it shows up in our language - I feel like my practice went backwards this week. Maybe it is disappointment one can see on their face, maybe a touch of feeling like they have failed. I know I have had those reactions when my practice hasn’t lived up to my expectations. 

Stick around in meditation groups with good mentors for long enough and you will quickly notice another pattern. After the retreat comes a sense of breakthrough, or deepened understanding, or renewed curiosity about self and the mind. Almost like the tension between advance and retreat creates the momentum or captures the energy like a rubber band when stretched, and catapults you forward. 

It is not the action that causes us suffering, in this case our perceived sense of going backwards, but rather our feelings or thoughts about the action. What happens then when we choose to reflect on why meditation inevitably presents us with the experience of advance/retreat? Is there an opportunity to choose gratitude when our practice is in a retreat stage? How does that change our experience of retreat then? What happens to your practice when you change your relationship to those moments of retreat, what learnings are available to us in those spaces?

I meditate to cultivate a life of ease and service, choosing to walk lightly on this Earth to honor our collective duty to nurture and sustain our world. By choosing to cultivate mindfulness, I give myself access to more choice and congruency in my actions.

Nature doesn’t make mistakes. Nothing goes forward all the time, what happens to your experience of life when you take on the expectation that forward is the most highly prized direction?

What would happen if you put that expectation down?