Meditation looks for us in the Pause
Basic approach to this ancient and wonderful practice
This is about the often ignored Pause Between.
All about working towards staying in the present and not living out our lives in the future or the past.
The practice is about bringing the mind, gently, into the present moment. As we all know that once the mind begins to float off to other things not in the present we so very gently bring the mind back to the now.
Some years ago I stumbled onto one of those exercises that promote staying in the present. It’s not all sitting cross legged. It could be but the practice of mindfulness can be pretty varied. This can refresh our dedication. Below is one example in which meditation can be practiced in a non-traditional way.
No doubt you can come up with more such practices of your own. First a few of the well known basics.
In the pause sits the scenario. To follow this now old view of things. Pause, take a breath, the gap between in and out, and voila! The inner universe. So the desire is to write about that inner unfurling between the in and out. First though, I have to get there. Getting there means actually trying the technique and experiencing first hand this island of fascination in between.
Have I gotten there before? I can say, sort of. Sort of because no, I don’t suddenly stumble over an inner realm, clear as water, flowers, gentle stream, winged fairies flitting about. No. This isn’t even close.
It’s more a gesture. A breath within the breath. The unmistakable sense that while there, I tap into an indescribable place of another energy. So this is a fact. Very real. Does it do something for me?
Almost always feel relief. Could it be like coming home? Perhaps. Is it like dropping into another world? Can’t say that as I have no notion as to what another world may feel like. In fact, such a thing most probably would bring on a terrifying awareness. Probably scare the living hell out of me.
An immediate sense of rest, of letting go of those things society has shackled us into believing are critical for life. The much talked of conditional things that shape our every breath.
This is something else. Maybe it’s a very physical thing. After all, it is between breaths as though something is suggested as a result of practicing settling on that pause. Often there is the suspicion that the pause I refer to goes on for some time. Sure it goes quick. But inwardly, the sense of stretching time is rather clear.
So. It is between the breaths, the gap, as the teachers refer to this experience. Visions? No. Flying? No. It’s a sense of being. I’m there, this place. No walls, no floor, not like that. So it’s about being here with capital H (here). Mind stuff, right?
I think polishing shoes might bring on a similar experience. Have you never sat and polished your shoes? The act is perhaps one of the oddest in the human experience. Ok. In my hand is a piece of shaped leather with hanging laces, smells leathery, smells of polish, distinct. Focused on the shoe, hand holding polishing cloth or brush swiping up against the shoes side, a hollow, rubbing sound emitted.
As with these types of meditation, being in the present is the key element. Wonder off, no problem. Gently and patiently bring your mind back to the polishing of the shoe, move by move, stroke by stroke. If you so choose, you may even select the distinct not unpleasant aroma of the polish as your object and hold it without straining.
Might be that sound that sends me off. Could be. The act, sitting, solitary, apparent objective, is to bring a certain shine to the surface of your shoes. The experience changes a bit when the shoes you’re polishing are not yours! Yeah, you see that? Of course you did. If they’re someone else’s shoes, suddenly the experience becomes one where another person becomes an inextricable part of your reality, your world. Amazing stuff.
I might even say that if the shoes aren’t yours but you’re polishing them for free, you may still reach that special place. If they’re paying you, then it does something to the magic. The subtleness is mostly sullied. Fascinating stuff, really.
If the shoes are yours, then the polishing, which becomes the meditation, stays right inside you, no outflow, no watering down of the experience.
Ah, but here’s a catch. Say the shoes belong to your sister and you’re polishing her black leather pumps. The purposefulness is regained or never lost. In fact, if it’s an act of favor, even a light form of compassion, the buzz can soar higher than usual.
Place is important too. If you’re doing the polishing in a public place, or your homes patio, whatever, then the pinpointed essence is lost. One needs to be alone. I used to pack myself away into the floor level of my closet. My closet was a repository for my ‘things’, the things belonging to a ten-year-old. My clothes found space there, as did the stuff I ‘owned’ like never used ice skates, a BB rifle, some spurs, a bull whip, a bowie knife, baseball stuff, like that.
My closet was a soundproofed sanctuary, not by design, it just resulted that way. The swish and fluffing sounds made of my swiping across the shoes with stained cloth or soft bristled brush were all that was heard. Hypnotizing. More importantly: the sound becomes your object.
Very meditational.
In hindsight, what was happening was the activity became meditation like as though a walking meditation. In walking meditation the step by step, the end, the beginning, during each step, the gap between the start of each step all becomes the mantra. A globally respected meditation teacher once told our retreat group that many of their best insights have come doing the slow moving walking meditation!
Exciting stuff. At the risk of overstating this, my hope is to share that feeling with you.
The sense of peace that overcame me, the gap, was beyond that which I would have ever imagined just from polishing shoes! I realized I’d found something. Discovered something. I wondered in those moments if others had happened upon this same discovery. I doubted so.
Of course as a very young man I wasn’t aware that I had by wonderful accident bumped into the practice of meditation! It wasn’t until seven or so years later in 1968 after finishing Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi did I sense I’d stumble across something big.
Years later, it was that I discovered that shoe polishing was similar to the peace found between breaths. This awareness didn’t dawn until I was into middle age. Meditating at some point, then an inkling, then the clear connection to sitting in that closet. The ‘a ha’ moment.
Polishing shoes, who’d a thought it?! I can to this day bring out my moth balled Florsheim wing tips that I keep around for the rare wedding or burial. There in the solitude of my current life office, which oddly still shares space for my clothes and collection of ‘stuff’ suitable for a seventy-year-old. Add to that now a Buddha decked altar. The old feeling comes back, though now usually standing up as I polish, it’s more a link or a transference of sorts.
It was my high school buddy Larry who inspired my shoe polishing practice. He recommended it to me one day. Never said the practice could lead to meditative islands of peace. I’m sure, though, that he knew this well. Years later, as a grown man, he joined the Spiritualist Church and, for years now, has been a reverend in that unique organization.
This polishing to meditation transference is hardly farfetched, of course. The greatest masters will teach how, after a number of years of dedicated practice, one need not go through the entire formal meditation to call forth the peace that has become so customary now. Oh boy, but don’t ever take it for granted. Be like throwing yourself under the bus.
In a gently falling snow, the silent monks walk single file to the meditation hall. A soft gong announcing the time. In a way, their shaved heads denote a true declaration of individualism. Contrary to common inclination, in fact, the monks with shaved heads are not striving for equal presentation to the outside world. The part we cannot see is what goes on within the monks inner self.
Each monk as individual and as different from the next one, like piano keys. Each uncover their own inner song, inner awakening. Like the piano, when working together form a cohesive harmonious reality.
Arriving at the dinner table to eat, six humans and a cat sit as one and yet are utterly different. Each human and cat brings with it, its own, extremely individualized degree of experience, of awakening experience.
It is up to each of us to further cultivate and harvest the potential goodness from a practice in meditation.
It is there that individual growth and progress reign supreme. Each individual on unique paths, each one experiencing different discoveries and awakenings, and to repeat we are as one.
