Our modern world overflows with stress. We are advised to periodically withdraw from it into isolated meditation. Yet there remains an in-between state in which we remain aware of our environment, but are detached and engaged with inner harmonies.
I spent such a time at an off-season beach yesterday, sitting on the water line as, inexorably, tide advanced in rivers and mounds of brown sea bubbles. Shafts of sunlight broke through leaden low clouds, causing sparkling light dances on the bay that could make an artist weep. Mist cloaked the far shore, a few birds soundlessly flew by.
I thought of very little, noticed this and that, unaware of time itself. Every once in a while I realized the water had crept closer. My body slowed to match my mind. And thoughts of the infinite and eternal floated comfortably among others of the local and transient.
Perhaps the raucous grind of industrial progress mandates that there be a rigidly militant meditation in counterbalance. Sometimes I need that cure. But too often, I think, I do not take advantage of quietly observing and relaxing as if on a front porch in the evening. No matter what the view.
Often it is difficult to follow one’s own best advice. Sometimes it is impossible. But I know I should make the effort, and, like yesterday, I always return rewarded.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 