Deeply
“Is there anything you have not experienced? For example, staying put in a single place and really trying to experience something deeply?” – Soko Morinaga Roshi
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I looked in every direction for fulfillment. If my compass rose was anchored by achievement, relationships, creative expression, and spiritual growth, I also scanned between each point and at various distances. In retrospect, my search was like a game of Battleship in which the pegboard was infinitely large and my only strategies were to randomly guess and frequently change my mind.
I never hit the same boat twice, until I stumbled upon meditation.
Then the grasping, acquiring energy turned to books, teachers, retreats. I talked to anyone who would talk to me about it to find out if there was a way to become more present faster.
That’s funny, right? Racing into the future to become present.
I knew it didn’t make sense long before I could stop. I suffered from the apparent paradox of intensely struggling to figure out the best way to get still and deep. I was afraid I couldn’t find the best way, unclear about what I even meant by “deep.”
As it turns out, it’s not a paradox. There isn’t any real depth until you get still.
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“Look closely. Don’t move until you see it.” - Uttama - Great Woman
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Meditators often aspire to the esoteric - something rarified, special, profound. This longing can grow stronger, more ill-defined, and confusing all at once as it becomes clear that wanting is both fuel for practice and exactly the thing that stands in our way.
While a meditator may want to experience more transcendence or more presence in everyday life, it’s really all the same thing when you consider transcendence as simply meaning outside of what’s normal. It’s not normal to be fully present in one’s life. Being mostly free from regret, rumination, and worry is absolutely transcendent - and not just because it’s not normal. There is a quiet, a peace, and a fulfillment in that freedom I promise you is not to be missed. It is also available to anyone who discovers that they can, in fact, be still.
A gift and natural byproduct of meditation is a gradual increase in what people call presence - a noticeable lack of distraction from desired events while they are happening (I don’t hear a lot of yearning for presence with undesirable events, but that comes too).
Another byproduct of meditation that is less well-known or discussed is an awareness of a more complete kind of presence that is available, and a craving (ironically) for that presence that grows. It’s this longing for profound presence that can happen in the most mundane of moments that becomes every earnest practitioner’s personal hell at one point or another:
Looking at the rain on the leaves, wishing to see rain on the leaves;
looking at leaves in the sky, wanting to see leaves in the sky.
Personally, I’ve experienced an uptick in transcendent moments lately - those in which I couldn’t even tell you whether I was breathing, but I could tell you that the realm of concepts was absent and the space between whatever I was seeing and myself closed.
Special states like this can be induced through means like plant medicine, breathwork, or sleep deprivation, and these are often helpful in loosening up stuck patterns and opening awareness to what is available. The quiet surprise of those moments that strike organically, however, are more fulfilling - like seeing a deer for the first time in a zoo versus watching one emerge from a forest and approach you slowly, fearlessly, fully.
When we aren’t looking, aren’t making a lot of noise, or better yet - aren’t even there - the woodland creatures are more likely to be at ease and emerge.
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“What really matters is to experience what everybody else experiences, the most commonplace things, but to do so more deeply. It is not important to know many things, or to know more than others know, but to understand more deeply what everybody else understands. Because knowing more deeply, understanding more fully becomes a tremendous source of strength in your life.” - Soko Morinaga Roshi
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Meditators tend to want the best practice to meet their aspirations, and why not? Just as I want my high school graduate to go to the college that best fits his personality and interest profile, and I want my youngest to have a coach who can customize his approach to hurdles and long jump during the off-season, we each want a practice that will yield clear progress toward our meditation-related goals.
The difference between finding the right fit and looking instead of doing the work, though, is critical. I wouldn’t encourage my 19 year old to change schools every time he has an unsatisfying class, and I wouldn’t interview seven coaches to work with my son on track skills if the first one I talk to is qualified and available.
It seems so obvious now, but I did have to call out coordinates somewhat randomly until I hit Meditation. Check though - do you really need to keep looking as much as ever, or is some of your searching a habit that has outlived its usefulness?
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I’m not yet perfectly present in every moment, and probably never will be, but I am free most of the time from the painful idea that I’m not improving quickly enough. My old stories just can’t hold up anymore against the evidence that things are going well.
You may have heard of the tradition among weavers throughout time and civilizations that calls for including intentional imperfections in their fabrics. The uniqueness of “mistakes” is said to represent humility, fragility, and impermanence - the aspects of humanity that make our lives beautiful and precious. My mistakes now feel more like a part of the fabric that must be there in order to complete it.
My middle child is graduating high school next week, and I’m satisfied. Not like “good enough” or “relieved” satisfied, but something much more precious: I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. I don’t have regrets about how I parented him. I’m not fearful about his next steps. I don’t wish he were younger or that he wouldn’t leave home. I feel present for him and with him because I’m not holding on to the past or worrying about his future.
This didn’t come naturally to me. It happened while I was focusing primarily on something else: holding still and working to experience one thing deeply.
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