In The Can

Boy, I wish I had more of these pieces “in the can.” Sometimes I feel like writing and it is not Saturday. So I write my piece. Save it. Then send it on Saturday.

BUT, if something else strikes my fancy later in the week, I will write another one Saturday and leave the first one “in the can” for a day when I am not so inspired.

Well today is one of those “less than enthusiastic inspiration” days and I have been searching through the can and can’t find anything appropriate to send. There are a lot of older ones, but perhaps you have read them before and I don’t want to recycle them if I can help it. I know you deserve something more than recycled thoughts I had a few years ago. Even if you have forgotten them by now, I still feel like you deserve something new and fresh each time I sit down to write.

Of course, that concept of “new” and “fresh” is kind of paradoxical concerning meditation, since we do essentially the same practice each week. I have been teaching the same material for the last ten years and not much has changed. Nothing new. Nothing different. Maybe a few new words here and there. Maybe a different way to look at a concept. Maybe a different way to integrate some teaching into your daily life. But essentially the same thing every week.

Then, how is it that Anyone would want to sit still, be quiet, and do the same thing for 30 or 40 minutes a a time, over and over again, weeks on end, … months on end, … years on end, and think they are somehow making progress? or getting somewhere? or not wasting their time?

The answer to that question, or at least an attempt at explanation, is this. What I say each week, during our group and in my emails is really the same thing all the time. I am trying to help you (and myself) experience how our minds work and discover ways that you can work with your thoughts, feelings, and actions to reduce your suffering in life. What is new is your reaction to doing the same thing every week.

Isn’t it amazing that we can do the same practice each week and, all of a sudden, some understanding pops into our head of a concept that we had heard or experienced many times before, but now see in a completely different light.

That is an awakening experience; Seeing the world in a completely different light: the light from within rather than the light outside.