It's not all me though. Really it's circumstance too. Things get in the way or you could say they muscle the writing out. Things both good and bad and somewhere in between. All the regular daily work of course. The music rehearsals. The walking to get where you want to go. The dishes, the laundry, the gardening, or the chopping of the firewood, the returning of the library books three days overdue. And then there are the unexpected daily variations too. The necessary shopping ahead of the big storm. The phone calls that start out as hey a how are yas but pretty soon turn into hour-long conversations and whoa where did the time go?
The point here isn't to moralize or even to commit myself to somehow doing better. It's just to state the facts: that just like everyone who's reading this, I have my juggling to do too. Of time and priorities. Sometimes I manage that juggling better than at others. Sometimes too, the juggling gets to me, and I ask myself is this the life I really want, and should I seek greater efficiency or greater simplicity? And if I chose to change, what would that change entail? What would improve and what would regress?
Here's a thought I had today though:
You're probably trying to do too much, if you find yourself forgetting about the most beautiful things that happen to you.
About a week ago I dreamed about my mother, who has been dead these seven years now. I don't as a rule remember many of my dreams, but this was a beautiful dream, beautiful and compelling. She had long hair, the way she did only when I was young. But she was neither young nor old, and how can I say it, but she looked like an archangel of herself: full of power, and projecting it, but having no need in the moment to use it. No light. No spectacle. Just the essential her, spiritualized and indelible.
The two of us sat on opposite sides at an ordinary wooden table. And she calmly smiled. And I reached out my hand and she reached out hers and took it, and then she dissolved from sight. And when she left, there was this moment of strong grief for me, but then—well then it was as if the grief I was feeling was a storm up on the surface of the sea, while beneath it, far enough beneath it, there was only the deep undercurrent of peace and that's where I found myself, traveling in the deeper peace of things, knowing that obviously she was not truly gone, but had in fact just met me and assured me that she was simply gone from here, and how exactly can death be as bad as we seem to consider it, when it is nothing more than an usher into that greater hall? A wooden, beneficial door?
That was my dream, and when I had dreamed it to the end, I actually woke up and it was maybe four in the morning. So I just lay there next to my life-companion under the warmth of the covers thinking over that dream, turning the image of my mother's truest face over and over in my mind. And then when I had gotten up and my wife had come downstairs to eat breakfast and I was cutting shavings from a log of cherry-wood to light the stove, I told her about my dream. And for the rest of the day, and for a day or two after that, the dream stayed with me as a sort of talisman against despair of any kind.
But here's my question. Why was it that, yesterday afternoon, a mere five days after I had that dream, when I first sat down to work on this post, I was not sure what I should write about? How could an experience so full meaning for me have fallen, in that small interval of time, fallen completely off of my heart's list of meditative concerns?
The answer? Activity I suppose. Activity crowds out thought. Busy-ness nixes meditation.
Nothing removes us from the touch of ultimacy more effectively than a crowded schedule or a long list that says at the top, “to do.” Worry. Stress. What others think of us. What we feel we ought to expect of ourselves. Most of this is impediment. It blocks. It prevents. It obscures. It diverts. It distracts. It divides us from our our wisest and most knowledgeable dreams. It causes us to forget who we really are: servants of transcendence, human beings crowned with consciousness, and intricately designed for the enjoyment of the living earth. Living gifts to one another. Co-creators of play. These are facts. And yet again and again we forget them.
What to do?
Some possibilities.
- Find someone who helps you reflect on your experience by listening to you, by means of conversation with you, by just being interested in you and in what you are becoming. This is to say, find a friend or two. Pass some time together. As much as possible.
- Cut back on the expectations. Do less. You are probably already richer in experience than you know.
- At the end of the day, take a few minutes to think over your day. Try to remember what happened. A small kindness done by a neighbor, a smile from someone on the street—these can stick with you for a long time, if you just think about them a little.
- Remember that what makes an experience important to you, is not just the initial experience itself, but how often you return to it. It's like going to a favorite campground. The more often you go there, the more favorite it becomes!
Of course these are all just suggestions. But I encourage you to consider them. Even just small steps in the direction of slowing down and reflecting on where you have been can prove enormously rewarding.
Best wishes in the journey!
HB
