Hi All and Happy Digestion Day,

In other words “Day after Thanksgiving Day!” Hope you are well and that a day of giving thanks was good for the soul.

I’m thinking that there is a high likelihood that many of us are still experiencing a lot of agitation. And Thanksgiving was a nice retreat into quiet or family. Lots of us had great meals… some of us didn’t really, but enjoyed the pictures. (Wayne and I are still in our trailer in Texas, so we were a bit meager in the food department.)

Meditation

If you are finding that you are having difficulties with meditation these days I would like to ask you to be kind to yourself. I hear many other spiritual leaders calling for love, and kindness, and happiness… and I question how useful those entreaties are to our actual health. I’m afraid that we too often take the “Opiate of the masses” approach to spirituality, and see that it is actually causing a lot of internal pain. In other words, if we always think we should be sweet, and kind, and loving, and then discover that we aren’t… how do we reconcile our own hypocrisy?

My meditation teacher taught that the ultimate goal of meditation is to reach a state where every moment is illuminated. It wasn’t so much that you changed yourself to reach some special state, but that you illuminated every second of your own experience, whether it was good or bad. With this approach you don’t have to wait for some miracle to happen. Instead you consciously embrace yourself the way you are. One of his favorite stories was of a Zen monk who lived in a cemetery. The guy was criticized constantly: Wouldn’t an enlightened person find a beautiful place to live? How could he maintain his meditation in such a ghastly place? And yet, here was the guy every day dancing and singing through the graves.

The point of that story is in how we relate to our own minds. If we wait for the beautiful, perfect moment to come we’ll be waiting forever (though you can come to dance camp and get a weekend of it). But if we can still call it meditation when we are raging and weeping on the outside, then we have illuminated our nature and taken a real stance for our being. It’s why enlightened people are always laughing! They see just exactly how nuts they are!

The thing that’s important to understand is that it doesn’t matter if the mind is raging, or if the mind is singing love lullabies. It’s still the mind – it’s still not you. The raging mind is easier to observe because we don’t like it. It’s loud, it’s mean, it’s full of fear, doubt and pain. It’s crystal clear, it’s sharp and in focus. You can literally let it go without cooperation. Just let it yammer on and watch it without interference. You are the watcher. You are the one watching. Be nice to the poor little thing. Hold still and let it have its say. As you simply hold true, in tune with yourself, including all that you like and don’t like, a focus may happen. The mind is much happier when it has a master who understands its needs, who creates a ripe field for it to thrive, who can withstand both the foulness and the beauty that comes from its yammering.

If you are kind of grasping what I’m saying here you’ll realize that I’m talking about changing the goal of meditation, and that changing the goal changes everything. If our meditation goal is to have a perfectly silent mind we are going to end up very frustrated and unsilent. If our goal is to have only a beautiful mind, then we are going to end up either loathing ourselves, or working ourselves into a fully deluded state. But if the goal is to just take a break from mind management and spend some time as the simple observer, then we’ll find ourselves more and more the master of our own experience. More than likely we’ll find ourselves more articulate, more creative and more centered… because it is the observer who can actually learn from the rantings of the mind.

This is the kind of meditative mind that can take on the burden of political activism and remain true. I believe this is what our times are calling for now and I’m here to encourage and support all the people in our community for their participation on any level.

A great article

Here is a great article by Barbara Kingsolver with some fabulous suggestions as to how we can move forward as a community in troubled times.

Trump changed everything. Now everything counts
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/23/trump-changed-everything-now-everything-counts

Here’s the poignant starting paragraph, please read the rest.

If you’re among the majority of American voters who just voted against the party soon to control all three branches of our government, you’ve probably had a run of bad days. You felt this loss like a death in the family and coped with it as such: grieved with friends, comforted scared kids, got out the bottle of whisky, binge-watched Netflix. But we can’t hole up for four years waiting for something that’s gone. We just woke up in another country.

Barbara calls us to action at the end of that article with a very good list of the things we can do as individuals, and I would like to add to that list.

If we are dancers, and singers, and lovers of laughter then let’s move and sing with more urgency. There is no need to sedate ourselves from our own experience. Honor your truth in knowing right from wrong. Don’t hold back from the uncomfortable: embrace that and bring as much music to it as possible.

When I really look closely at my own experience I see that my mind is asking me to find a way to do more. To do the things I do better. To make more of an impact. That’s something we all do together. That’s something you can do for me. That’s something I can do for you. The raging mind, in the end, if born with dignity and watched with self-love will always bring up the next step.

Wayne and I start driving home from Texas next Saturday, December 3rd. Apparently I am fully cured, and have every intention of making as much mischief as I possibly can. As soon as I have the opportunity I’ll be calling together leaders in our community for training and putting together our next steps so that our dance community can thrive and grow without interruption. Hope to see you there!

Love and hugs

Zareen