(Bud at the dump, waiting for his biscuit)

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

-T.S. Eliot

The essence of mediation, I was taught, is to know things as they are, not as we might wish them to be.

I would rank this among the most powerful lessons of my life, along with being crazy and different. Maria cracked me up today, we were riding in the car and she asked “do you sometimes think that we are not normal?” I replied “Where have you been this past few years?”) I almost spit up my water laughing. Er…yes, I said, I think we are completely not normal! Who do you know who is anything like us?”)

Meditation is important to me, and mostly for selfish reasons. It was in meditation that I first learned to see the truth in my life, to  seem me as I am, not as I thought I was, or hoped I was.

There I began the process of trying to become the person I wanted to be. There was – is, I’m afraid – a very wide gap between the two and one of the things I know now is that there are nowhere nearly enough years ahead of me to get where I really want to be.

I don’t mean that in a depressing way, I’m just learning what it takes to really change and grow and find real peace.

The author Amit Ray wrote something I am learning, it really doesn’t matter how much money you make, what really matters is the amount of good energy and positive vibrations you radiate in life. As someone who often poisoned the air with angry and resentful energy, I see the wisdom of his writing every day. It feels good to do good, period. When I had money, I almost never felt good.

I am learning that there is a way to be sane. I am doing it by being a witness to my own mind, to my own thoughts. I am learning that I am not the mind, I am the witness, the watcher. Thomas Merton says this is the way to true enlightenment.

I don’t expect to get all the way to true enlightenment, but I am working hard, and seeing the truth in myself was and is both painful and difficult. I understand why so few people try to do it.

This is the most difficult spiritual work I have done. It can’t be done quickly and easily, at least not for me.

Every day reminds me how flawed and broken I am, every day gives me hope that I am getting better. Authenticity is a kind of faith for me now, a demanding companion and a rewarding one.