whether times are good or bad, happy or sad
We’re all navigating different circumstances, yet – like any ecosystem – we are all interconnected and interdependent. Whether times feel turbulent or at ease, a practice we can always turn to for a bit more equanimity is meditation.
Although meditation doesn’t ensure feeling 100% zen 100% of the time, it can definitely help us understand and cultivate that feeling as often as possible. Similarly – mediation might not diminish all conflict, but it can help us to better navigate it.
Just because we meditate doesn’t mean we can or should gloss over challenging conflicts and extreme emotions people experience; it does not minimize or bypass.
Meditation does, however, offer us a variety of tools to learn how to cultivate more equanimity / centeredness / awareness / forgiveness / peace / connection / etc – whatever allows us to be simultaneously more alert and at ease – whether we are in a comfortable moment or not.
We might also even better understand how to let individual or collective pain be part of our experience instead of trying to bury or ignore it, without inhibiting us from taking action and continuing on in our lives. This could even inspire us to act and live more consciously amidst both conflict and unity.
There are always various forms of pain and difficulties in the world, which makes it all the more important to cultivate the tools to move forward with more attention and compassion (even if and when anger and devastation exist as part of the repertoire of feelings, too).
One interpretation I have of the philosophical yoga sutra teachings is that, through continuous and dedicated practice, we begin to embody and integrate the tools we gain and learn from the practice more naturally – whether it’s yoga-inspired movement or meditation, ceramics or cooking, drawing or dance…
The wonderful thing about meditation is that we can literally take it with us wherever we go – it’s part of us, if we can make time for it. That means we always have the choice and opportunity to practice, sharpen, and integrate these tools into our ever-changing life experiences, no matter where we are in the world or who we are with.
As meditation and mindfulness leader Jon Kabat-Zinn says: wherever you go, there you are. I would add that, wherever we are or go in this world, we are always with ourselves and always interconnected to each other.
The more regularly we practice meditation, the more we strengthen our connection to ourselves and each other. The more we solidify the connection to ourselves and our collective interconnection, the less divisive (and hopefully less destructive) things might become…
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