Life A Meditation
I woke at 6.19am.... It looked a bit dark and maybe cold ish outside... Forgetting England might be a little chillier than Gozo, I had left my running tights and long sleeved top at the bottom of my rucksack!
It was a little difficult to be quiet enough to not wake Anadi... As I tipped all I own out to find the items to run in...
I ran down the ten flights of the premier inn Gatwick - the lift seemed to be stuck - and out into a lovely fresh November morning.
I hovered on the pavement...
And then asked the doorman 'Is there anywhere I can run? He looked about 'where, does that bloke go running?'
He then pointed across the road, 'follow that path across the roundabout and you can run on the grass verge....'
And so that is what I did... I managed three miles of grass verge, back and forth and loops round a grassy island with trees in the middle, and the cars zoomed by me.
It felt quite a traffic meditation...
About twenty years ago I can remember going to see the film 'Shine', which is about the pianist David Helfgott, who was pushed hard by his father and teachers and had a breakdown.
I went to see it a few times actually, as I used to do that with films that spoke to me... He returned to the piano eventually...
At the time I was living in a flat overlooking a street. There was a big bay window in the living room, which I often used to sit in and watch the cars going by...
I found it restful; and in the film there is a bit where Helfgott does the same thing...
Today as I ran on my rather strange running track, finding the zooming cars quite a stilling sound and backdrop to my grassy verge, I was reminded both of the film and my traffic meditation all those years ago....
I was first introduced to life experiences as meditations, rather than only practicing meditation by sitting in stillness, in Osho's book 'Dynamic meditation'... I found it opened a way to deeper relaxation. It also helped me in my work with my clients; for instance instead of fighting things like smoking, by making it a meditation and paying attention and being present to every aspect of the smoking ritual, then awareness and acceptance deepens and self loathing leaves...
It opens the way to the true understanding that the practice of meditation is simply a process towards every moment being a meditation...
Life a meditation
