#inktober52, "Train"

I used to go to a meditation group once a week.  Our leader turned down the lights and in her soothing voice told us to imagine a beautiful field of wildflowers.  I internally griped, "Why is it always a meadow?", but I complied.  I imagined pretty flowers.  Eventually, we progressed out of the meadow and my grouchy thoughts of sunburn and I found a calm in myself.  I suppose my grouchiness and fears of sunburn were a metaphor for the crap I carried in my head most days.  I got a lot of positives from meditating and our group became good friends.

The place we met was right next to train tracks.  We all giggled the first time a train went by during our meditation and rattled the windows.  Our patient leader gently suggested we could put all our problems on the train and listen to those problems being carried away.  This happened many times.  I dutifully put my cares on the trains.  I can't see or hear a train anymore without smiling and feeling my blood pressure drop.

Meditation comes in many forms.  What I've described above is a guided meditation.  Sometimes I sit at the river and watch the water go by until I find inner peace.  Art and ditch digging can be meditations.  Sometimes I just pay attention to my breathing (which is probably healthy for everyone in Covid-19 days).  Some people focus on thinking of nothing (something I find absolutely impossible).  Some people do yoga or walk.  Whatever works.  I don't think there's one right way to go about it.

For myself, I start out by checking in with myself.  How stressed am I in the moment?  I give myself a numerical grade.  A good day is a 10 or less.  Often, my score is 5,000.  I start counting backwards, sometimes jumping down 100 points at a time until I can feel the stress leaving my body and my breath evening out.  I notice places where I'm sore or tight and concentrate on relaxing those areas.

I often think of meditation as an awake dream.  I get myself relaxed enough to see where my brain will go.  Like a night dream, answers to issues can be seen through a different light.  Sometimes the answers are so obvious I wonder why I didn't see them in the first place, but I doubt I'm the only one who tells myself what I'm feeling instead of actually feeling my feelings.

For example, I go about my day and think about the things I'm doing.  Everything's fine, so why do I feel so stressed?  After calming myself I can see that I'm worried about the state of the world and individuals I care about.  In my regular thoughts, I tell myself I can't do anything about those things so quit thinking about them.  In my meditative mind, I honor these feelings.  It isn't an issue of fixing situations, it's finding my place in them.  Maybe I can't help someone with health issues or a drug problem, but I can go to my food giveaway and feed other drug addicts and elderly people.  I feel good to do that.  Those are people who want the help.  I feel more peaceful which is better for everybody because being wound like a spring about problems I can't solve just makes me testy to be around.

Yes, I have shown you this train before, but having had to paint it twice for this painting it only seems fair to post it twice.  You can see the whole painting here.  I've done more Barbie paintings but haven't seen any appropriate words to show them off yet.

I can hear trains at my house.  They're carrying away my problems.  How do you meditate?

"Glow"

Sometimes I forget to breathe.  I know that’s nuts.  After all, breathing is supposed to be one of those automatic things we do, but I don’t think I’m the only one who forgets to do it.  We get stressed, and our breath becomes shallow.  We don’t even notice there isn’t any oxygen in our lungs, but who hasn’t cried and ended up gulping air in dramatic sobs?  Tears trump air and actual survival.

I have an interesting uncle, the kind of uncle everybody should have.  He has a house full of mysteries that’s fun to explore.  He’s shot lightning across the basement with Tesla coils, melted glass in a kiln, and had huge tins of military surplus candy.  He also had a picture of a turbaned man lounging in a plastic recliner, which definitely wasn’t my idea of “spiritual leader”.  I couldn’t imagine Jesus in a plastic lawn chair.

My uncle was the first person I ever knew who chose a different religion than the one he was born into.  The idea was novel to me, exciting, disturbing – and I wasn’t really sure how to accept it.  I also didn’t know how to process things about that religion, especially when my uncle tried to explain how and why he meditated.  I couldn’t grasp the concept.  I simply couldn’t keep my attention on my third eye and kept thinking “this is impossible”.

When I reported back to my uncle that I couldn’t do it, he asked if I had ever looked at a cup on a table and become so absorbed by it that I forgot about everything else in the room, forgetting the table the cup was sitting on, and even forgetting about my own body?  Or, had I ever lost myself in the flame of a candle?  Well, sure, everybody’s done that, right?  Which I don’t know if that’s actually true, but it made sense to me.  “That’s meditating”, he said.

I found myself sitting at the river, watching the light bouncing off ripples of water.  I felt my heart calm, felt my breathing deepen, and realized I was great at meditating – when I actually remind myself to do it, and I didn’t have to convert to a religion with a guru sitting in plastic lawn furniture to do it.  In fact, I realized that meditation is a universal human activity when we go fishing, get lost in painting, or any other quiet, focused activity that humans do.

Today is the winter solstice.  That means the days will start getting longer again.  In many traditions, it’s time to meditate and let go of things that no longer serve us, time to look forward to new opportunities.  Breathe in good, and breathe out bad.  In is healing and universal light; out is stress, pain, disease, release. 

I’ve been distressed about the recent school shooting in Connecticut.  I don’t want to see video of stunned children forgetting to breathe, their faces white from shock.  Other people can argue what we should do about preventing events like this in the future. I’d like to remind people how to cope when bad things happen, and remind other people that while I hope you have the best of holidays this week, we also need to remember the people who are missing at the table this year.

There are candles lit all over the place right now for prayer vigils, Christmas, and Hanukah.  Let’s all remember to take some time to look into the glow of candles and remember to breathe.

The top illustration is scratchboard with some screwing around in PhotoShop.  The painting is something I did when I was first learning how to breathe on purpose and before I understood what cats look like.  It’s also my first oil painting, when I decided I hate sticky paint.

Wishing everyone the joy and peace of the season!