I'm in Maine this week, at a cottage my parents have rented. The place is so idyllic it's almost a cliche. Outside my bedroom is a pond with lily pads under old arching trees. In the distance on the other side of a very thin peninsula is the ocean.
This morning I meditated at sunrise. You'd think it would be easy to achieve that blissful connection in such a setting. But what I find the more beautiful and perfect the setting, the more I feel that stress inducing urge to grasp at it. To start thinking, how can a now, knowing such a beautiful place, be happy in my old place of meditation with its morning traffic and beeping street light for the visually impaired.
The first trick is to get to the twenty minute mark, the point at which the silt of our normal stress begins to settle. I know I've reached it when I have that familiar restlessness, and boredom, an almost psychic itching that makes me want to leap up and out of this pose.
Then I do what Shinzen Young calls recycling the emotion. Take the restlessness, be with it and wait for it to pass. It's basically a recursive function applied to emotion.
Eventually I reached the insight that there is no point grasping to keep this place. The best way I could use it to deepen my meditation, was to rest my awareness with the same lightness as I would on any other day, in any other normal place.
Once I did that, the whole space opened up.
I am here this week to realize that I do have power in dealing with the emotional complications of my family. Part of that power is realizing where I am powerless, and where I should probably remain powerless. I cannot stop my parents from fighting. I cannot make them more loving with each other. They don't want my mediation. I only have the power to decide whether or not I want to trigger a fight, or step away from a fight that I have become involved in. I do not want to start any fights. I do not want to continue any fights this week. Nothing,absolutely nothing, is worth fighting over in the beautiful place. So if my mother acts irrationally, or unfairly, I don't have to protect myself. I don't have to play the vulnerability card. I'm simply not as vulnerable as all that. I am more than this little node of selfness that lives in my brain. I am also everything that I'm connected to.
I will step away from all fights this week. I will not be drawn into them. I will not add to them. I will not involve myself in the fights of others.
The decision has been made.
