Meditation

We’re still animals. Our brains enjoy flashing lights and novelty. We have a propensity to look for startling things. It’s part of our instinct, a protective reflex. We don’t even realize when we do it….oh look there. Something else. Life is movement. We notice where life is.

These electronic connections via media and devices give us tiny little rewards with each “like”, pretty picture, flash of light or color, targeted advertising, interactions with electronic others. Maybe we get a little drip of extra brain chemical, like an extra pat on the back. Brain asks for more input please. Flash. Ding. Are you listening to music? Multi-tasking? Thinking about one thing and doing another? Wanting to be doing something different? Honing your reflexes?

How good are you at doing nothing? Humans use that as a form of punishment sometimes. Confinement without things to vary. We consider it to be cruel and unusual, but what else are prisons? Are we doing anything to actually improve people, or just breaking them further than poverty, circumstance, and desperation already have? (Sometimes it’s safety.) Sometimes it’s all we long for: the time to do nothing. Time to optimize flow or stillness. Time stretches for some, sprints for others.

What are you doing? More specifically, ask your self, what am I doing to improve the world? Who is missing at my table? What am I being distracted from by utter nonsense, noise, flashes of novelty? Things to fret and plan about, that don’t really matter. If I just sit and listen, what do I learn. How do we all let each other shine our best? How can I support you? How can I be? How can I be better?

Stop.

Breathe.

Feel the earth below your feet, deep roots stretching to molten core. Feel the sky above reaching beyond. Feel all the space in between.

Breathe.

What if you only had time for quality time? What if there were no limits on time? No shortage of minutes?
What would that look like? What would that live like? Are you living it? Are you there now? Are you immersersing yourself, if so? Filling your senses? Soaking up whatever contentment is there?
Find beauty, even if it’s a crack in the wall. A grain of dirt once made from a mountain, made of starstuff and who knows what before or beyond. Keep riding that wave…it carries you, and you carry it.