Still Point Meditation for Stressful Times

Sometimes life hits us from multiple directions at once. It can be hard to know which front to deal with first and the stress can build to a point of overwhelm pretty quickly. No matter which issue we give our energy and attention, the others still pull and we get drained.

I have a meditation that I use for just such times that actually developed out of my love of storms when I was a kid. I still love them, probably because I live in So Cal! Some of my favorite times were spent snuggled down in bed, listening to a storm outside and feeling completely safe inside. It was like being in a protective bubble where I could see and hear the violent winds and rain around me, but remain safe and undisturbed where I was. I call the meditation Still Point, as in the still point in the center of a hurricane, or tornado. If you can imagine what it might be like to be sitting in the center of a tornado, legs curled up comfortably underneath you, while the wind whips things around you at hundreds of miles per hour with deafening noise, rain, and hail. There you are, in the center, where it is safe and calm. You are surrounded by drama, distress, disaster, violent change and everyone’s stuff. But in the center you are peaceful, you are grounded and you have the choice to reach out into the storm to connect to something or not. If you decide to connect to something in the storm, and you leave your still point to reach it, you risk getting sucked into the storm with it where you will be whipped around and around and end up some place in Kansas under a house. If you connect from the still point and stay sitting there, you can bring what you wish to connect to into the still point with you and deal with it there where it is calm, and where you know that you are safe.

Try it for yourself.

Get comfortable and imagine yourself sitting on a cushion. Your legs are crossed, you are comfortable and your body is relaxed. As you relax you start to hear the sound of a storm all around you but you are not disturbed. You can see and hear the storm, but where you sit it is calm and there is no storm. As you look into the swirling winds you see people, places and things that have been troubling you. Relationships, money, work, health issues, whipping past you as you watch from your still point. Pick one that has energy to it for you. Take a breath and exhale and then reach for it staying planted on your cushion inside your still point. Bring it to you and examine it closely. What does it hold for you? Sadness? Fear? Anxiety? Loss? Helplessness? Hurt? Longing? Is there something you need to do? Something you need to say? Or is this just about feeling and letting things be for now, or maybe letting go? Now let that one go back into the storm, reestablish yourself in your still point and then repeat this for any other ones you want to deal with for this meditation period.

When I do this meditation I am immediately hit with the feeling of the situation or the relationship that I have chosen from the storm. I am not distracted or defended which allows me to see much more clearly what is actually in front of me. We are constantly surrounded by the people, places and things of our life and it can begin to feel like we are being sucked into the swirl of it all. I find that this simple meditation can create a space where clarity and mindfulness become the ground of our engagement with our external lives. In this space, we can find equanimity in chaos and amazing change can take place.

Do You Believe That Love Trumps Hate?

"Hatred paralyses life: Love releases it. Hatred confuses life; Love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is so much hate in our country at this moment in time. Polarizing camps spewing angry rhetoric and claiming ownership of the truth. The situation is much like the situation during the struggle for civil rights in the 60's. Dr. King knew then what we need to remember now that hate will never win against hate. That only ends in violence and more hate. The only thing that wins against hate is love. Someone once said that "hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness."

History has proven that to be the case and it is still the case today. It has been proven again and again that positive thought directed at a situation can diffuse the tension. In a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Social Indicators Research reports on one of the most dramatic sociological experiments ever undertaken. Researchers predicted in advance that the calming influence of group meditation practice could reduce violent crime by over 20 percent in Washington, D.C., during an 8-week period in the summer of 1993.

In fact, the findings later showed that the rate of violent crime--which included assaults, murders, and rapes--decreased by 23 percent during the June 7 to July 30 experimental period. The odds of this result occurring by chance are less than 2 in 1 billion.

The demonstration project involved assembling nearly 4,000 practitioners the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs from 81 countries. Participants were housed in hotels and college dormitories throughout the District of Columbia and at the University of Maryland.

Hagelin says previous research had shown that these meditation techniques "create a state of deep relaxation and coherence in the individual and simultaneously appear to produce an effect that spreads into the environment, influencing people who are not practicing the techniques and who have no knowledge of the experiments themselves."

I am proposing that we take this information and use it to diffuse the hate that is bubbling in this kettle of fear and threatening to overflow at any moment. In the study they had 4000 participants. I have over 2000 Facebook friends and another 500+ contacts. How many people do you have on your Facebook page, email list, etc. who would join us for 3 minutes per day to stop Hate? I think we can top the 4000 participants from the gate.

Here is what we will do. At noon everyday for the next 90 days, we will stop for 3 minutes and send Metta, or Loving-Kindness, into the heart of the Hate in this country. Metta is like a prayer that is born from our compassion, from our understanding that at base all human beings are alike in their desire to be safe, happy, healthy and at peace.

Do YOU believe that LOVE trumps HATE as Dr. King did? If so, then join my group People Who Believe That Love Trumps Hate where you will find the instructions for sending Metta and more information on the group. Then add your positive energy to ours everyday a noon by doing 3 timed minutes of meditation focusing on the people who are filled with anger and hatred that we see and hear in the media daily, and sending them our Loving-Kindness. If you are at all uncomfortable with my suggestion you can use a prayer, image, thought or just the intention to send peace for that timed 3 minutes instead. It is all about energy and intention and if that is there, we can't help but make a positive difference.

So, please send this out to all of your friends and family. Let your spiritual leaders know and encourage them to put it out to their congregations, sangha, and groups. Spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. Let's really try to blast the cancer of hate with a huge laser beam of Love.

The buddha in the bank line

A few months ago I was standing in line at my bank waiting, thinking, people watching as usual. A girl about 7 years old was walking around the bank, clearly bored and waiting for a parent. I was starting to look around to see who that parent might be when she appeared and in a pathetic voice only a bored 7 year old can make said to the woman behind me, 'mommy I want a chocolate'. I thought to myself, kind of early but ok, works for me! They evidently had some kind of an agreement because her mom replied that she might want to think about waiting to have her chocolate until later because they were going to be going to a few more places before they would be done and ready for lunch. The little girl wasn't having it and upped the pressure, and the tone. 'But I NEED a chocolate!' she pleaded. Again I could relate, but the transformation of the mother's facial affect and her posture had my attention. Mind you I was trying not to pry but at this point it was hard not to watch. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next and in my entire life, my education and my experience I would never have thought to say it myself but I wish someone had said it to me. Might have saved me a lifetime of addiction, isolation and body obsession. The mother looked at her young daughter and said in a tone that could have righted a wobbling plane, 'you do not NEED chocolate. No one NEEDS chocolate. You NEED to pray! Did you pray today?' The little girl sulked and mumbled, 'no' but her mother wasn't done. 'You are going to pray right now for everyone in this line and then everyone behind the counter and then all the people in their desks. You are going to pray that they stay healthy and that they have good lives.'

The little girl sulked off, I suppose to pray, but that would be amazing even for the most obedient 7 year old, and I was struck, gob-smacked, pick your expression, but I was in awe of this woman, this mother, this amazing human being who actually knew to intervene with her child in a place of pure boredom and self-centeredness and redirect her to think of others. I commented to her as much and we had a wonderful conversation about it all but that really isn't important here. What is important is that I met the Buddha in line at the bank that day and she taught me 3 things:

1. She taught me that the lessons of life are ongoing, every moment of everyday of my life. They never stop, I am just available to receive them or I am not. If I had been distracted into busyness, talking on the phone, checking my email, I wouldn't have been present for this moment and would have missed one of the biggest teachings of my spiritual life. We can either stay awake and be present for these remarkable moments, or, we can collapse into the static that is always waiting, leaving us to sleep-walk through our lives.

2. That as parents we are our children's first spiritual teachers. It falls on our mostly unskilled, unprepared and unknowing shoulders to guide these little hearts and minds towards the positive mental and emotional choices that will eventually become part of how they see their world and themselves in it. Most parents these days are so overwhelmed with the fundamentals of life and parenthood, this can't come as good news, but it is. The mother in this case was middle class, had a business and a second job, a single mom and taking care of a sick mother. It isn't about free time. It is about paying attention. It is always about paying attention. If you pay attention to your kids, to what they say to you, to each other, to the tv, to their toys, to themselves, you will learn a lot about how they are. They will tell you with what they ask you for when they are tired and frustrated. They will tell you with what they settle for instead of your attention, what you buy them off with so that you can get a bit more done. They will tell you with what they chose to console themselves with then they are sad or disappointed. The one major quality that is present in all great spiritual teachers is their capacity for being present. The quality of their attention in that presence is like the rays of the sun for whomever is there with them. This is what it is supposed to be like for our children when we are really there with them. Our attention is manna for our offspring and they can't thrive without it. They can live without it and do, all the time, but that doesn't mean they should have to, and they will not thrive. They will survive and adapt and develop into adolescents that don't need it and then adults that can't cultivate it to give to themselves, their lives, their mates or their offspring. And so it goes. We become a culture of parents who run with their toddlers in strollers while talking on the phone and we blame school lunch programs for childhood obesity and put our sad children on antidepressants. A very sad state of affairs.

3. She taught me that the antidote to craving, of wanting something outside of me to make me feel better, to make me feel less bored, to make me feel loved and wanted and safe, is prayer, is getting out of ourselves and into someone else's life. When we are in a place of 'I need', we are rarely actually 'in need' of anything at all. There are definitely some situations where 'need' is real and is serious and should be met quickly, but, for the most part, our needs are usually wants. We have just gotten used to using the word need, for want, and I admit it does sound better and makes it seem much more justified. The trouble is that over time we have become immune to what the energy of 'need' really is supposed to be and have developed into a lazy, addicted, instant-gratification seeking culture with little capacity for learning curves, waiting, or working for something. Unfortunately for the sake of 'I need it right now' we have given up some wonderful things such as anticipation, appetite, satisfaction of accomplishment, savoring and enjoyment. I know for me that there is very little that I really 'need' other than the obvious basics, but, at any given moment I can give you a list of wants that are presenting as real needs. When I sit with the feeling of that need, something else arrives, a discontent, an absence of something that I just can't quite put my finger on. My impulse is to 'do something' to satisfy this feeling as though its mere presence was a cause for alarm and action. When I don't act, I feel and when I feel I am here, present and connected to my experience. I may like it, I may not like it, but it is happening regardless.

The key to happiness lies in that moment of connection with ones experience: if you can't meet yourself where you are, then, you will never truly 'be' happy anywhere else. Sometimes standing still is the deepest kind of prayer. Asking someone how their day is going is another. Next time you think you 'need' chocolate, a drink, a cigarette, that pair of shoes in the window, whatever, be still a moment and see what comes up. Then look around and see who is there that could benefit from your attention in some way. Sometimes just a sincere inquiry into their day can make a big difference for them and for you.