2 words that change everything and bring it back to now.
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Transcription below for those who like to read:
E:
I found the words, “begin again’, in the meditation, not only helpful from an instructional standpoint, but also from a concept of how to live life and be in the moment. How did that come about and find it’s way into the meditation?
H:
This idea of beginning again… it comes to mean many different things on many different levels, but here’s what my experience tells me...that in order for spiritual principles to be valid a couple things must be present. Some of the greatest truths are elegant and simple and in this case it’s both simple and practical. I know I got caught up for so long about this idea of spiritual principles being some place far off, something ethereal, something in the clouds or in the stars, unreachable, versus an actual, tangible, actionable thing today. Right here, right now. THe only place that truly is, and that is right here right now. You know what’s funny, sometimes we can get caught up in semantics and tied into words, but what I think is one of the biggest challenges was for me was this idea of mindfulness and meditation in conversation is even the word mindfulness because it’s almost contradictory.because the practice of meditation for me, rather than filling up the mind or the mind being full, it’s an emptying into present moment awareness, or presence. And so, what typically happens to I think many of us is that we have an experience of meditation or what many people are identifying as mindfulness which is really present moment awareness, which can be profound in itself. But then we find ourselves going about life and we are faced again with that human condition and I instinctively rise up and I come across a situation that I perceive as not going my way. Or I perceive something that would be better for me. So on one hand I begin to have a resistance to something happening (“oh God I don’t want that to happen”), or on the other hand, I begin to have a desire or craving for something else to occur (“oh my life would be better if only I had these things”). And as I’ve gone along experience will tell us the futility in both of those situations. Experience will tell us that those are the root and cause of all our problems really. So this idea of beginning again, beginning again...beginning again.is maybe just an expression of returning, returning right back to the only place that ever was and ever will be - and that’s right here right now. This perfect permanence here. The infinite right here right now. Not in a distant place, not in a someday place. It is right here and right now. I think for me, beginning again, is returning to that truth. Beginning again to empty, to remove, to subtract. discard, shed, all of those other things, and beginning again back to that place of presence.