What's the Point of Meditating?

During a conversation with friends the question came up, "Why do people meditate; what's the point of meditating anyway?" As typical of a deep thinking introvert, I didn't have a good answer at the moment. This question was asked last week and I'm still pondering a succinct answer! I've finally answered the question - for myself anyway.


I meditate in order to be a non-anxious presence in the world.

I love meditating AND it's not easy!

It's hard to find the time, to still my body and my constant mental activity, sometimes by sitting still in a classic meditating pose, more often by walking and quieting my interior as my exterior moves.

Non-meditators believe the point of meditating is to not think - whoa, that's FAR from the truth! The only way a human won't think is probably ....

if that human is d.e.a.d.

Meditating is simply letting thoughts be, while not following them or getting hooked by them, thus they dissipate. Meditating means not being overly attached to your thoughts, sensations, and emotions. We are all so attached to our thoughts!

We think we exist because of our thoughts!

We think we exist because of our big emotions!

We believe our thoughts and reactive emotions are the truth about ourselves, others and situations. In reality, our thoughts and reactions are just a slice of the truth, conditioned, judgmental, habitual and self-defeating rather than whole or edifying.

There are many ways to learn this skill, and all involve some kind of maturing through counseling, teaching, or spiritual journeying with physical or mental discipline.

But back to my statement of being a non-anxious presence - I am not naturally wired as a funloving, carefree, daring personality. I'm rather deep, intuitive, a recovering perfectionist, with a bent toward melancholy and concerned about almost everyone and everything.

Meditation shapes me into not taking myself and life so seriously.

The discipline of quieting, of listening deeply, of opening my heart space to Presence, (God, Divine Love, Goodness-Truth-Beauty, Ground of Being, Universe, Christ), of regularly letting go of my ego, my thoughts, my emotions are the greatest gifts I can offer myself and the world. This practice calms me, teaches me how to create a space between a situation or thought so that I may choose my reactions.

Ask yourself how this kind of pausing, of choosing your reactions affect you? Affect the world if more of us did this? Rather than just following or fanning our instant knee-jerk reactions to life - all those worries, alarms, the stuff that inflates or deflates us, challenges us or makes us crazy? How would our world look if we all had such a practice?

Sitting by a rippling brook is a great way to meditate.

Meditation appeals to me for those reasons. And because it's free and available to all. There are so many ways to meditate! Ask me if you are curious.

Meditation is my greatest gift to myself and to the world.

Dogs really know how to meditate!

Try giving yourself such a gift. Happy meditating!

Don't Pick the Bud

ripe persimmon

                                                                                                

       For tree and wildlife lovers, hope comes not only in feathers as Emily Dickinson writes but also in twigs with roots!  

North America is home to the persimmon -- the diospyros virginiana -- a small, round variety known as the putchamin, an Algonquin Indian word for “dry fruit.”

Here’s a quote about the persimmon from Captain John Smith, who wrote the “General History of Virginia” in 1624: If it be not ripe, it will draw a man’s mouth awry, with much torment, but when it is ripe, it is as delicious as an apricot.

What a great quote! Can be applied to so many things in life: don’t rush the moment, don’t pick the bud... or the chrysalis, wait for it, don’t worry about tomorrow- trust the process, and my personal favorite poem in this theme-

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

excerpted from Hearts on Fire

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 free sapling I picked up from VA Dept of Forestry