Missing Meditation, Missing Me?
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I understood when I was on the Big Ride that I was participating in an extended meditation experience. I wrote about that quite a bit in my memoir. I also described it as "living poetry" in which taking the time to actually write poetry would have taken me out of the poetry I was living. Essentially, I was in the moment practically every moment, on the bike and off.

In the subsequent seven years, I have achieved that level of openness probably on one occasion only, during the week I spent at Reclaiming Camp. Again, I was in safe space and this time involved in active, actual "planned" meditation with a large number of other people.

The amazing thing is that even though I have lamented the loss of myself and have been trying to figure out why I can't "bring her home" from the Big Ride, it never occurred to me that it was the meditation element of those experiences, and NOT necessarily the "safe space" element of those experiences, that made them what they were. I have been feeling as though someone had given me permission to be my best self on those two occasions and blaming myself for not having the strength of character to give myself that same permission in my "Real Life." All this time, I've been thinking that the Big Ride and Reclaiming Camp were somehow outside of my Real Life--that I couldn't find my way to my self here the way I can when I step out of my Real Life into one of my adventures.

I have been absolutely exhausted lately and really tired of this depression. Grasping at straws may be one way to put it. So on Tuesday I decided that I was finally going to read Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It was first recommended to me when I was depressed in college, and I know it is the primary text for the local Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course I almost (long story) took last fall. I have owned the book since last spring and it has sat beside my energy healing books untouched all these months. As I was reading chapter 2, "The Foundations of Mindfulness Practice: Attitudes and Commitment," it occurred to me that the reason I didn't bring me home from the Big Ride was because I didn't bring meditation home!!!

According to Kabat-Zinn, there are seven attitudinal pillars of mindfulness practice: non-judging, patience, a beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go. I engaged with each of these principles over the course of the Big Ride summer. They were natural extensions for me of the journey I was on. By Day 2, when I fell and broke my cycling computer and was the last rider leap-frogging the SAG van all afternoon, I was immersed in meditation and patience and non-striving and non-judging and self-trust. I already have strong experience with beginner's mind and I got a big dose of letting go when the ride ended. But it never occurred to me that it was the meditation--the active creation of space in which to practice these seven attitudes--that I needed to bring home in order to bring my full, whole self home with me.

It seemed that she was simply incongruous with the Real World, that she would not be appreciated, or understood, or tolerated here--certainly not encouraged or supported--the way she was in those "other" experiences.

I can't say that an hour of meditation every day is going to bring on the sudden return of myself to me, but I am going to try. Wouldn't it be amazing if meditation, this thing I've been playing with but never committing to, were the key to me, and I've been carrying it all along but never thought to use it in the lock?

To learn more about mindfulness, visit www.mindfulnesstapes.com