I started a meditation group last week. I don’t know how it’s going to go, since a number of people here are some degree of deaf. And since many people have no experience, I’m doing guided meditation. They need to be able to hear me.
I’m hoping I can do some actual teaching while calling it “Relaxation.” I’ve been at this so long—35 years or so—and then I took a break—and suddenly found myself wanting to help again. When I say “help,” I mean that there comes a time, don’t you think, when our accumulated skill, learning, even wisdom, start to turn around and begin to want to be helpful in the world?
I’ve held off this impulse for a long while, remembering the early days when my ego liked to teach, be in charge, dispense wisdom. I’ve been checking out my motives. And then, too, I’ve been checking out whether I’m needed for this. There’s already a meditation group. I’m calling this one “relaxation” as a different way into the practice. It's a sneaky way to begin what, if continued, becomes a bumpy, difficult, and life-changing work.
I realized this morning I need to emphasize the “awake” part, the staying alert while being relaxed. The tendency is to think of “relax” as something akin to sleep. But what we’re after here is relaxed-while-alert-ness. There’s a close connection to writing, here. To all forms of art. Remaining alert, seeing what’s here without closing the mind and eyes. Doing the intellectual work of choosing words, moving words around, revising, while at the same time staying relaxed enough to let the intuitive self step forth. It’s a dance.
Given that I’ve been meditating so many years, I haven’t written much about it. It’s a practice, not so much a body of knowledge. There is learning, but most of it is body-learning. I think you have to focus on Enlightenment (whatever you take that to be) at first. You have to have a goal. Eventually, after a long practice time, the sense of a goal begins to dissolve.
Likewise, when I started writing poems so many years ago, my goal, I guess, was to find my place among the poets and writers I admired. Now where am I? Writing to be writing, putting down words to see more clearly, to make something. Why do I want to make something? I can’t say. I’ve gotten stupider. I’m like Forest Gump. I’m like Melville’s Pip. What comes out of my mouth, out of my mind, is 80 percent intuitive, fastened by loose threads to the ever-shifting universe.
Last night I dreamed I forgot to go to meditation. Everyone was waiting for me. Why had I forgotten? Where was I in the world? How have I landed here, at this far end of my life, writing these posts, keeping on picking out words to say how it is, how it was. I am half-crazy, half calculating. Did I “land” here? Little by little the accumulations have brought me here. I think it’s like that.
All those years of sitting on a cushion, hour after hour, day after day, have disappeared like nighttime when the sun comes up. It’s no longer of any importance how I got here, or how much time I “spent.” Nothing adds up anymore. This is what I have to report to you from where I am. If you are much younger, this will sound frightening. If you are closer to my age, you may get it. You won’t care about things adding up any more.
Oh, sorry! I notice that there’s no thru-line in this post! Sometimes I read obituaries, I see the way the family has tried to construct a story, something about devotion to family, or to church, or being a good coach. This, apparently, has been the narrative of that person’s life. But really, there’s been no story, only a narrative put together by a relative. Instead, it’s been a gradual accumulation—this, and then this, and then this. That’s enough, I think.