This track includes ten minutes of meditation practice; if that feels like a lot to you, maybe start at the beginning!
Turn on the TV, get comfy, and play this track after you’ve watched the episode: Storytelling (Season Two, Episode Five).
The method of this sit is modeled after Shinzen Young’s “See, Hear, Feel,” so if you respond well to it, feel free to dig deeper on your own!
Mentioned in this post: Joanna Macy’s World As Lover, World as Self
P.S. If you’re curious, here you can find out why I started this project.
Recording Transcript (Meditation Begins at 4:22)
Hello again, friend. Thanks for taking this time to be with yourself, and my voice in your head. I hope the day finds you sailing smooooovely down on a gentle leaf and not throwing up soup onto your friend, but however it finds you, I’m glad you’re taking a moment of stillness and care.
I don’t know about you, but I *hate* being sick. I often self-describe myself as a “terrible sick person,” impatient with myself and others, grouchy, pleading for it to end. There are some experiences, some body sensations, that are just really fucking hard to be with.
I don’t want to pretend that meditation can offer some quick and easy transformation for these experiences, although some meditation traditions really do suggest that there is no end to the kinds of suffering that dedicated practice can alleviate. I don’t know about those, because I am making these recordings as someone for whom meditation has offered a *lot* of support, but who is still very much caught in patterns of suffering.
And if I’m being completely honest, I’m not sure my desires for meditation are about eliminating suffering altogether, so much as they are about growing through it, becoming more attuned to what discomfort can teach me, and more resilient in the face of difficulty. Because, for me, pain, discomfort, and challenging emotions are really valuable things. They have a lot to teach us, about what we care about, about how we want to be treated, about what matters to us. As Joanna Macy says (in her book World As Lover, World as Self) “the pain we feel for our world is a living testimony to our interconnectedness with it” (p. 42, 1991) or as I paraphrase it “pain is the price of caring.” And I care a great deal, not only about myself, but about suffering all across this beautiful world.
Because of the fact that I care (and I imagine that you do too), ultimately, I don’t believe that I will ever eliminate my own suffering for as long as other people are unnecessarily suffering. “But… I don’t know how to make that stuff happen.” Of course, some forms of suffering are unavoidable. We will all one day undergo the “rite of forest justice” and “enter the earth and become one with the soil.” We will die and our guts will blow out of our faces (but not literally… probably…).
I can’t decide which of the suffering we collectively witness and experience is an unavoidable fact of life, and which of it exists because of fear, patterns of harm, and limited imagination. At best, I only have one super tiny piece of this planet sized puzzle and it mostly concerns how I relate to the people immediately around me, and how I relate to myself. But I think you have a piece of it too.
What I *do* feel confident about is the way that meditation has helped me to more clearly understand what is within my control, and what is outside of it. And also to help me feel a little more okay, a little more spaciousness and self-acceptance, even when I am suffering. It hasn’t necessarily eliminated suffering, but it has changed the way I relate to it, at least in certain moments, with a little luck. When I am caught in a trapped mental loop between not hurting aminals, and meeting the needs of the aminals I care about, settling my nervous system can open up space for me to remember my values and commitments, to think creatively, and to communicate honestly. Sometimes I find that my cage is made of sticks and I can kick it apart.
So this is what we’ll be exploring a little more directly in our next ten or so sessions. Finding a little bit more space around our experience. Not chasing the suffering away, but just seeing if we can’t make a little more room for it.
(As always, if the practice gets too intense or unmanageable at any point, don’t hesitate to put it down, walk away, and find whatever other support you can!)
Okay. “C’mon Boobafina,” let’s meditate!
