Be Here

I receive the daily meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation in my email each morning. This week has been about letting go, detaching, unburdening. It can be described by many words, but it boils down to getting out of our own way, becoming quiet and still, ceasing the racing thoughts.

What does it feel like? Becoming more fully alive and awake right here, right now. Having a mind that knows clarity more than clutter.

It takes daily practice and some days are better than others. “What we practice grows stronger.” For decades, I practiced self-defeating trains of thought. Over the last three to four years, I have practiced stillness and quiet and done the work required to finally be able to recognize thoughts as just thoughts, to more readily and quickly let them pass.

I am not always at peace. Who is? Even knowing a peaceful mind and heart some of the time though is a liberation that was striking to me when I first experienced it. Now, I seek it out and it has become more readily possible.

Here are a couple of lines from this week’s CAC meditations that really resonated:

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. —Meister Eckhart

We can never get there, we can only be there. —Richard Rohr

Subtracting the debris of “not good enough.” The God of my understanding, whom I often refer to as Great Spirit, doesn’t want to make tough terms with me. Great Spirit only wants to connect and love, so I can connect, love, and serve in this life.

And to “only be there” means to be here. Be here. Present. Appreciative of coffee, oatmeal, quiet, fresh air, my family, our dog, my working limbs, my eyesight . . . and the list goes on.

Where do you find the liberation of stillness? What can you subtract from life? “Be here” and start your own list. Onward!