Getting Started

A number of years ago, I was in a bad place. Life as a whole was fine, but one piece of my life had captured my mind, and my mind, in turn had captured me. No matter where I turned my attention, my thoughts quickly performed a mental ju-jitsu and pulled me back into the morass. Recently, introducing some elementary aged folk to the idea of mindfulness, I asked them to imagine a group of monkeys swinging through the trees. They reach out and grab a banana. "You're the banana," I told them, "and they swing around, passing you back and forth while you become more and more disoriented and desperate." A number of years ago, I was the banana, and I needed to free myself from the monkeys.

A therapist introduced me to the idea of rocking back and forth while I repeated a simple phrase to still my mind--very much like the pendulum exercise that Susan Kaiser Greenland discusses in Mindfulness for Children. I tried it, and the monkeys let go, at least for a while. Long enough for me to catch my breath. Long enough even for me to listen to God a bit. I wasn't captive to myself.

Soon after that, a student introduced me to Centering Prayer and the wonderful teaching of Thomas Keating. I learned how to still my mind for more than five minutes. Or at least every now and then I could still my mind. But even more, I learned what it meant to open myself to God--to simply be present to God. That open presence--it was a warm, sunny rock residing in my consciousness. When the monkeys got to it, they didn't disappear, but they did want to rest and relax. With that presence, even the monkeys in my mind sought for peace, at least some of the time.

Again, after a time, several friends introduced me to the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh, and I learned that I might experience that presence throughout my day. That God's presence is as close to me as my breath. That my breath not only could slow the monkeys, but that it could open up the world for me. I could see that everything was permeated by grace.

This blog is an opportunity for me to talk about living in this presence--what I would call spiritual living. And its an opportunity for me to talk about the practice of mindfulness as a way to make space, daily and hourly, for this presence. I don't know how mindful I actually am in my living, but I know that it occupies my thoughts now, but in a peaceful and gentle way. I'd enjoy sharing that, so I will.