At Wisdom's Edge
Arriving At Wisdom's Edge
For all that has been, Thank you.
For all that is to come, Yes!
--Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
The truest moment of creativity is always the present moment, where gratitude and expectation live side by side. Our first year in Sedona had been spent learning to open to this present moment. Breathe. Wait. Be patient. We'd arrived here hoping to rekindle a relationship with our muse and had learned to nurture wisdom and creativity in places where the muse makes its home. One of those places was the Amitabha Stupa and Peace Park where we'd grown comfortable with meditating in nature. Meditation practice was something we'd held on to from our long ago hippie days back in the sixties.
Transcendental Meditation was big back then, the thing everyone did because it was the sixties and meditation was the way to peace and love. Louis had his own spiritual approach but I liked TM because I got to have a personal mantra, which felt like a secret password for admission to an exclusive club. When later I explored world religious traditions and studied the writings of spiritual luminaries, I saw meditation wasn't exclusive at all and had always been a practice available for anyone who wanted to learn to sit, surrender and breathe.
Our house in Sedona was not far from the Stupa and we often visited. The people in charge of things had kept the place rustic but nice enough so that everyone felt safe and comfortable participating in ongoing activities. There were prayer flag ceremonies, robust trail hikes, lessons on how to meditate that took place in a small viewing stand with a plastic roof and plastic chairs to sit in and admire the stupendous scenery. What we liked best was the full moon group meditation. Every month, unless it snowed, we climbed the short, rocky trail up to the Stupa, grateful to join other meditators who'd come to surrender to the present moment.The monthly sit drew locals and travelers alike, some of whom compared the Stupa to healing sites that draw visitors and seekers from all over the world, places like Santuario de Chimayo in Northern New Mexico or the shrine at Lourdes. In Sedona, which is an international dark sky community, the blanket of stars spread overhead was unfailingly stunning as we made our way up the trail to the meditation space. Even if there was a bit of cloud cover lending a soft and fuzzy mystery, the rising moon was powerful enough to cast a golden glow on all of us as we sat for an hour with Ani Miranda Coates, a Buddhist nun who was one of the Stupa's caretakers.
During those evenings of meditation the solace of approaching twilight took hold, deepening inner stillness as gentle breezes caressed our faces. The chorus of evening sounds swelled with a magnificent symphony of crickets calling for calm, one lone owl hooting his hypnotic refrain. Fragrant juniper, pine, cypress and sage whispered their old, sweet wisdom as now barely discernible rocks took on oddly familiar shapes in the growing shadows. Look, is that a monk? A meditator maybe. Could be an old wise woman. With every sense engaged we imagined ourselves surrounded by the beneficent spirits who lived there, guiding us on the path to remaining in the present moment.
When the sit was over, it was as if we'd been in a spiritual shower bath, alive, clean, blessed by release and communion with other souls. We'd discovered that wisdom's edge is not one place, a line to be crossed, a prize to grasp. Rather, it was illusive and magical, inviting us to go further with every step, to dig deeper with every breath. We found that the muse lives inside us all, and we've learned not to set limits to our creativity. May the muse be with you.
A Prayer To Yes!
Deliver us we pray, from the company of sad and contentious spirits. We're looking for happy souls now, yes we are. Lead us, push us, pull us to those hallowed places of mystery and beauty where we can find the things that really matter. Take us for a walk at dusk among the strong, stark and often strangely seductive native plants and birds of the high desert. Thank you for the things that we've found that have enchanted and inspired.
Remind us that the way of calm, peace and enjoyment isn't something to hold on to only for ourselves alone. Let us practice the sharing that is the dessert of life. With family. Cats. Grocery store clerks. Drivers on the road. Fellow writers, artists, musicians and yogis all over the world. Sweet seekers and friends who've found the truth of it all.
And
at the end of the day tell us again what we need to remember: That
residing in peace can be learned, like any skill, with a little
instruction and some disciplined practice. Surrender, sit, breathing in, breathing out, breathing up, breathing down. Honoring the holy. That we can always find the place
where the
special favors,
gifts and shining
mercies reside. Right here, right now and for what is yet to come, Yes!
Meeting Your Muse:
Breathe Up, Breathe Down
When I first began learning to meditate I was aware of a cacophony of inner chatter, fragments of the past floating up in full and living color and sound. Uncomfortable at times, like listening to an old movie with a relentless audio track featuring an onrushing cavalcade of frenzied characters chattering madly away. In time I became acquainted with a kind and safe presence that was always there, always available. I learned to see my life as part of something much greater than the previous perception of who and what I'd thought I was. Healing began as old memories and ghosts were released.
There are numerous approaches to meditation but I especially like Buddhist meditation teacher Lewis Richmond's suggestions. His gentle book, Aging as a Spiritual Practice, is a friendly and very useful guide on the road to wisdom's edge showing how to get our bearings and map new territory in the second half of life. He says we have two ways to experience the passage of time: horizontal or vertical.
Richmond says Horizontal time is a linear stretch with mileposts and road signs providing information about stops and starts and comings and goings as we chug along from childhood to old age. Vertical time, on the other hand, encompasses the present moment only, this body, this breath, right now. Vertical time is always just here, he says, and unlike horizontal time, it doesn't have room for either old baggage and sad memories or imaginary, distant futures, like beads on a string as they roll into view one after another. Vertical time is the string itself. His instructions:
Start by thinking of your life and its major events as a horizontal line. Your past stretches to the left of wherever you are on that line; your future stretches to the right. The events that stretch into the past are clear and unchangeable; the future is blurred: you don’t really know what events will eventually occupy that line or how long the line will eventually be. Think of this as horizontal time. Now switch your focus from horizontal time to vertical time.
Then breathe in and imagine the breath moving upwards in a column from where you're sitting. As you breathe out, visualize the breath sinking down into the very same place. You'll notice that all the movement is vertical and doesn't move around in space, traveling from a certain past to an uncertain future. It's just always right where it started, resting solidly in the same spot, like a house resting on a foundation. In other words, it's the timeless conviction of the present moment.
