Chasing After Silence

After a week of spending time with my family in the Midwest, running around and visiting with siblings, parents and other relatives, I came back to Colorado needing to calm my mind, so I headed to my cabin.

 

Sometimes when I’m just starting out meditating, I can actually feel the texture of unsettledness, almost like an electric current that feels like I’m being zapped at a low level continuously.  How lucky then I am to have this place where the silence is almost complete, where I can open myself to this magnanimous space.  And I was fortunate last week to have a day where it rained most of the afternoon, so I could measure my breath by the soft and insistent sound, which has the effect of turning me inward.

 

Before it started raining, I sat on the back deck, and because I was motionless, life went on all around me: woodpeckers climbing up and down the trees, making their strange guttural cries; a ground squirrel digging in the dirt below me for bits of dried grass and pine needles, stuffing them in its cheek pouch and running under the porch where it presumably was making a nest (but for winter?—it’s too early!); and two ground squirrels coming up on the back porch to stare at me intently, as if trying to figure out what I was, then quickly losing interest to chase each other around the yard.

 

Later, when it started raining, a soft gentle rain, I sat inside the cabin and meditated—that struggle to stop all the endless thoughts. In between the thoughts, some peace and acceptance sneaks in. There is no one else around, no noise at all except for the rain hitting the metal chairs on the deck and the birds calling from the ponderosas.

 

 In an effort to catch my breath, to force it to slow down, I started thinking about how hard it is to live in the present and to experience one moment changing into the next. Could I catch that moment? —observe  how the day gets darker, then lighter as the clouds thicken  and disperse; how the rain speeds up, then slows down. With every breath the world changes, and I breathe to keep up with it, to not get left behind.

Comments

[shoney]

What a peaceful reminder to appreciate the rain---and the breath---and the world.

[Julene]

I like how you don't overstate the case for meditation. Just to have a moment or two when thoughts aren't racing is enough, since that's so rare an experience ordinarily. Then the idea that being in the moment is the only way to keep up--that's profound.

[Sally]

I loved this one, Kathy as I find this is my saving grace. I pack up my van and have a wonderfully quiet campground in the Redwoods by the ocean where I do what you just talked about and it returns me back to sanity and with out this I would have been nuts or much sicker. After about 24hrs I feel so normal and relieved that I could relax, let down, unwind. And the fresh air helps too. Connecting with the elements and the wildlife and the web of life is so restorative. I wish I had a cabin like yours. But I have something that does the same. I have been doing this since childhood and it has always worked. I loved this piece it's what the world needs now!!