Meditative Thoughts
Meditation is a concept that has always
fascinated me. I saw a post recently from Iyanla Vanzant, minister and
spiritual leader, about meditation. She wrote:
“Meditation
is a process that stills the mind in order to facilitate sacred healing and
growth. Meditation can and will order your thinking and therefore your mind. As
we heal the broken and wounded places that exist in our hearts and minds, we
grow mentally and emotionally. Mediation is, therefore, a tool for growth.”
I have to admit, meditation is a concept
that is foreign to me. I understand the purpose, yet I do not understand how to
do meditate. To me, meditation means to calm the mind. My mind is always
thinking, always active, always full of thoughts. As I watch a movie, I notice
little parts that no one else seems to notice. When I listen to music, I analyze
the instrumentation and harmony. As I drive home from work I watch the road
while I’m wondering what I will have for dinner that night.
To quiet my mind is a monumental feat. I
face this challenge every night as I go to sleep. I am always thinking about
what happened during the day, what I need to do the next day, what I will do
the day after tomorrow, how I will do this, how I will accomplish that, on and
on. It is an infinite cycle. I often have to turn on music, or sounds of nature,
to quiet my mind and hasten the journey to the land of nod. It used to be that
I could not sleep with an ounce of noise. Some nights I cannot sleep without
it.
I recently found a quote my Mark Twain
that I relate to:
“Life does not consist mainly -- or even largely -- of facts and
happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing
through one's head.”
That is how
I feel, that I have storms of thoughts in my head. How do you attempt to calm a
storm? How does one begin to meditate with those conditions?
I found
another quote about meditation that speaks to me:
“Your mind
is a constant traffic of thoughts, and it is always rush hour, day in, day out.
Meditation means to watch the movement of thoughts through the mind.”
-Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh
Perhaps that
is the meaning of meditation, to watch the movement of thoughts, to observe the
thoughts that flow through the mind. To be a writer is to be an observer, to
process all information observed through thought. My charge is then to meditate on all I have observed, translate my thoughts into a new creation, a concrete work of art from my
observations transmitted through thoughts. Thus my art continues to grow, as do I.
Thoughts
beget observation of thought, which then begets further thought, and on and on
and on. It is an endless cycle, if not a redundant one, of thoughts building
upon another. It is like the cells in a nautilus shell, or the circles and spirals
in an infinite mandala. It is at once constant and endless.
Perhaps that
is my charge, to begin to meditate, to further understand all I see and observe
and to then create from the stimuli received. I have heard the phrase, “A
writer’s mind is always working.” I now understand what it means. It means to
have meditative thoughts.
“Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel
within a wheel.
Never ending on beginning on an ever-spinning
reel.
Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival
balloon.
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings
around the moon.
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the
minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently
in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills
of your mind.”
-“Windmills of Your
Mind”, Melody by Michel Legrand, English lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn
Bergman.
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