The Greatest Love the World Has Known

some time ago, when i began writing this blog, i intended it to be a journal of my experiences as i walked a new path, one that i started when i began to explore mindfulness meditation.  i don't know how well i've done in chronicling my progress, but today i thought i'd explore how my effort to live more mindfully has changed my life.  at the time i began practicing meditation, i was at a point in my life when i was transitioning from work to retirement.  my life was not as busy, and i had a great longing to leave the noise and confusion of the world behind and find a peace that i hadn't had time to even think about, much less search for, when i went to work every day at a job that often called for working long hours seven days a week.  my work was rewarding and had enabled me to have a healthy income in retirement, but i was ready to lay aside its burdens and have more time to explore my inner life.  i longed for quiet, for space to be alone and discover who i am.

i knew that i was not my job. there was no emptiness once i gave up my role as a teacher. yet, i wasn't certain who i was. i had always believed i was the person of my thoughts, that the stories my mind told me about myself was my true identity.  when i began meditation, i realized that the real me was not the person my mind had created.  if i could stand outside my mind, so to speak, and observe my own thought process, there was a "me" that was separate from my thoughts.  somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain was a person who had remained hidden all those years while i listened to my mind telling me who i was.

for me, meditation has been a process of letting go of my conscious mind and allowing a deeper sense of my personhood to emerge.  as that happened, my attitudes and beliefs softened.  i saw that many of my thoughts and actions in the past had been less than helpful to others, even cruel.  so at first, and still from time to time, my meditation brings me pain for the ways i thought and acted in the past. somehow, though, that pain hasn't led to depression and guilt, but rather to a sense of new beginning.  the realization that i can't undo the past has helped me see how to learn from it.  for the most part, while i can't make amends for the harm i've done to others, i can make the effort not to repeat those past mistakes.

i've largely abandoned the religion i practiced for so many years as i've come to see that it is based on a system that fills those who practice it with guilt and a sense that life is a series of rewards and punishments that they hope will ultimately lead to a better life in a heaven filled with angel wings, harps, and golden streets.  i have my meditation practice to thank for leaving that unrewarding and damaging religion behind.  though i still call myself a christian, i'm a very different christian from the calvinist i was brought up to be.  the God i worship is a very different God from that of many christians.  my object of worship doesn't sit on a throne in the great beyond with a book of judgement in hand recording who's naughty and who's nice for some future day of reckoning, nor is the God of my worship one who took on human form so he could be sacrificed on a cross to wipe out my sins or those of others.  God is not my individual god who has "a plan" for me and caused me to exist to carry out that plan.  i don't need to be "saved" to escape eternal damnation because adam and eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit.  rather, God calls me and every person to take part in the great feast of love that God is and that is within all of us.  meditation has led me to this realization and so has transformed, and continues to transform, my life.

i used to keep a little account book in my mind filled with criticisms of others, especially my wife. in my narrow-mindedness, i saw myself a superior to her and constantly watched for her actions that i believed proved it.  after i had practiced meditation for awhile, i saw how wrong i was.  i realized that i was married to a wonderfully talented woman, a brilliant person who had overcome so many adversities to become a successful, capable, loving and lovable person.  when i found myself becoming irritated because she didn't conform to what i wanted her to be, i pictured her as the hurting child she was when she was growing up, and all i wanted to do was embrace her and reassure her that those hurts were in the past.  my mind's little account book is gone, and every day i rejoice that i can share my life with this amazing woman.

i'm not as anxious about the future as i used to be.  i can enjoy the present in the knowledge that everything will be all right.  i'm able to accept people as they are, not feeling the need to change them so that they become what i want them to be.  i'm comfortable in the realization that there is more of life behind me than ahead of me, but in what time there is left, i intend to live joyfully, to experience as much of life's sweetness as i can.  i'm not bound by a sense of duty that arises from the fear of doing the wrong thing, of breaking the rules and causing harm to my "immortal soul."  i can act from a sense of love towards others, not because i wish to avoid sinning and the guilt that is the result of that sin.  meditation and mindfulness has freed me from the narrow confines of tit-for-tat religion.  my heart and mind are more open, more accepting, more filled with love so that there is no room for hate, revenge, or recriminations.

meditation and the mindfulness that flows from it continues to transform me.  i look forward to the person that i will become as i continue my practice.  may we each find the source of happiness in our lives.  may we realize that happiness is our ultimate goal and can be our current state of being.  may we see that true happiness doesn't come from holding onto and wanting things but from accepting and seeing the wonders that surround us each moment.  may we let go of our hates, our desires, our grasping, and embrace the here and now, filling our hearts with love and compassion.  shalom.