C I R C L E O F H O P E

Our wandering mind is the part of meditation that people tend to find frustrating. We want to be calm and focused, but our mind runs down all kinds of crazy paths, shouting at us to come with it. If we suddenly become exasperated at our wandering mind, we then realize we’ve also lost our hold of three mental attitudes that are important in meditation:

· patience: allowing things to be the way they are and to unfold as they will;

From this point, we could go all the way down that road and give up on our time of meditation: “This just isn’t a good day to meditate”, or “I’m too uptight to do this”, or “This isn’t working”. Or perhaps even beyond that, to “I guess meditation just isn’t for me”, or “That does it; I quit!” On the other had, we could jump to a fourth mental attitude that is important in meditation - letting go. We look at the whole mess, we let it go, and we respectfully escort our mind back to the focus - yet again.

After a while, you may discover something quite interesting about your random thoughts. They’re not you! You can choose to follow them or let them go. It’s your choice. Sometimes, though, certain thoughts or emotions are very strong and not so easy to let go. This is where non-judging comes in. We treat all our thoughts the same. A certain thought may seem important or worth remembering or insightful, but it gets the same treatment as thoughts we might consider trivial or unimportant - they are all noticed and then released. We refuse to follow any of them.

Letting go of our thoughts, however, does not mean suppressing them. Many people hear it this way and make the mistake of thinking that meditation requires them to shut off their thinking or their feelings. They somehow hear the instructions as meaning that if they are thinking, that is “bad”, and that a “good meditation” is one in which there is little or no thinking. So it is important to emphasize that thinking is not bad nor is it even undesirable during meditation. What matters is whether you are aware of your thoughts and feelings during meditation and how you handle them. Trying to suppress them will only result in greater tension and frustration and more problems, not in calmness and peace.

Mindfulness does not involve pushing thoughts away or walling yourself off from them to quiet your mind. We are not trying to stop our thoughts as they cascade through the mind. We are simply making room for them, observing them as thoughts, and letting them be, using the breath as our anchor or “home base” for observing, for reminding us to stay focused and calm.

In proceeding in this way, you will find that every meditation is different. Sometimes you may feel relatively calm and relaxed and undisturbed by thoughts or strong feelings. At other times the thoughts and feelings may be so strong and recurrent that all you can do is watch them as best you can and be with your breath as much as you can in between. Meditation is not so concerned with how much thinking is going on as it is with how much room you are making for it to take place within the field of your awareness from one moment to the next.

It is very freeing, after working with your thoughts in this way, to finally realize that your thoughts are not you. And they are not necessarily reality. Because you have a thought, for example, about everything you have to get done today doesn’t mean that that’s the truth. It’s just a thought. You do not have to be pushed by it to exhaustion trying to get that list done. But having perceived it and realized that it is just a thought, you can return to it after meditation practice and thoughtfully make your day’s to do list, always being mindful of non-striving so that, if a monkey wrench gets thrown into your day and the “to do” list becomes impossible, then that is your reality, and you flow with reality, not your mental list, doing what you can and leaving the rest.

Remember, though, that if any thought grabs hold of you and you can’t seem to let it go, all is not lost. Simply change your focus from your breathing to what “holding on” feels like. Look at “holding on” as if you’ve never experienced it before. This is in no way a “less advanced” meditation. Meditation is about being awake and aware. That’s all. You can be awake and aware of “holding on”, and that is meditation as much as focusing on your breath. In fact, there is one form of meditation called “choiceless awareness” where your focus is anything that comes to your awareness - sounds, thoughts, breathing, body sensations - all noticed and then let go to make room for the next thing that comes to awareness. But the essence of meditation remains the same - awake and fully aware.

Beginning meditators and those hoping to move into contemplation sometimes make the mistake of thinking that they will become less and less distracted the more they practise. Not so. Every meditation is a new experience. As Jon Kabat-Zinn noted, some periods of meditation will be more quiet than others. But never will you arrive at a place where your mind doesn’t wander, and never will you be free of days when it wanders a lot. This is not the peace that meditation or contemplation produces in a person.

Here is how one mystic explains it (for the word “mystic” and “mysticism” you can substitute “contemplative” and “contemplation”, since they mean pretty much the same thing):[2]

A common, beginning perception is that the mystical life in general, and mystical prayer in particular, is increasingly free of distractions. In this perception, mystics are thought to be people living a tranquil state of mind, free of conflicts and mental wanderings. Similarly, the mystical state is sometimes associated with a life of complete solitude, free from the “noise” of humanity. Thus, in this isolated and quiet environment, mystics are thought to be free from the distractions of humanity and able to listen directly and completely to the voice of God.

Laboring under the conception that a distraction-free environment leads one to God, beginners in the mystical way are prone to criticizing and blaming. They may complain that their meditations are being disturbed by the human foibles of others . . . These sincere seekers of God are distressed that their world is such a noisy place.

Underneath it all, they secretly blame themselves, believing that if they were more disciplined or holier, they would be making considerably more spiritual progress, which they measure by . . . their tranquility of mind. They are distressed that their daily meditations seem marred, if not ruined, by constant distractions that press on their minds. These mystics, as they become more proficient, are distressed to find themselves seemingly even more full of distractions and assailed by the weaknesses of others and themselves. The thought often surfaces in their minds: “If only I could find a place far from these distractions, I could finally find the God I seek.”

While acknowledging the significant value of periods of solitude and silence in the contemplative/mystical life, and the godly desire for a perfect solitude, this author reminds us that this is really a desire for God Himself because only His perfection is the silence full of peace that will completely meet the desire of our hearts. He also explains that our cry to escape our wandering mind and other earthly distractions is a cry to be released from our humanity, which will not happen while we are on earth. But he reassures us that “this constant failure to find holiness in ourselves . . . leads us again and again to rely only on the holiness of God”. And this is the place we need to be - in the place of grace - knowing that experiencing God has nothing to do with anything we do ourselves to make that experience happen, but we experience Him as He brings us into that experience. Some of those experiences will come when we are in solitude and silence, and others will come when we are most distracted and our heads most noisy. So we accept our wandering minds as part of our humanity. The result of this acceptance can be a pleasant surprise. This author continues:

Ironically, once we become more accepting of distractions in life and in our prayer, these distractions bother us less. The more we accept this human weakness, the less it disturbs our inner peace.

Once we have divested ourselves of our illusion that human frailty and the noise of humanity is a detriment to the mystical life, we find ourselves much more at peace. Ironically, once we accept that mental distractions will always be a part of our prayer, these distractions lose their power to hinder the soul from mental tranquility and from its centeredness in God.

We want to flee from our messy, noisy humanity. We want the pure life of the angels. But God has made us flesh. It is a reality we cannot escape. It is only in and through this messy humanity, a humanity that God deeply loves, that the mystic path leads the soul to God.

So we accept ourselves as we are, and we release all our anxious thoughts to God because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).[3] This is the Biblical expression of letting go and coming back to the focus.

Do a 10-minute breathing meditation, either using the guided meditation or on your own.

Repeat Day 10, but at the end, take an extra couple of minutes in meditation. Move your focus from your breath to the sounds around you. Don’t listen for sounds. Just hear what’s there, without judging or thinking about them. Simply experience them. You may even notice the silence between the sounds. After a couple of minutes, return to your breath. Then, having found that focus once again, slowly end your meditation and return to the world of doing.

Repeat Day 10, but at the end, take an extra couple of minutes and let go of your breath as your focus. Open yourself up to whatever might come into your field of awareness - sounds, thoughts, bodily sensations, feelings. Let them all come and go, watching and being aware of them in stillness. This is choiceless awareness. After a couple of minutes, return to your breath. Then, having found that focus once again, slowly end your meditation and return to the world of doing.

[1] Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (New York, New York: Bantam Dell, a Division of Random House Inc., 2005), at p. 69 (emphasis in original).

[2] Stephen J. Rossetti, When the Lion Roars (Syracuse, New York: Ave Maria Press, Inc., 2003), ch. 23.

[3] Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.