My good now flows freely. Divine ideas express themselves through me. I am at peace.
I have heard that as people age they become more extreme versions of what they already were. I don’t know whether to be concerned about this or not. It also made me wonder if hobbies taken up later in life are just physical manifestations of personality traits. Or maybe that’s just what hobbies are regardless of age? I’ve always hoped to become an older woman who lacks ego. I imagine myself gardening, and interacting with young people genuinely and lovingly, at peace with myself and with my world. I have been told that the fifth decade in a woman’s life is when she becomes less concerned with what others think, and I keep waiting for this to happen. But I wonder if I would notice if it does. Free flowing goodness seems like it requires both an insight and inner calmness that I don’t feel I’ve ever had. The only time I can step outside of myself and just exist is when I’m singing or writing. Maybe I should just sing or write all my communications from now on. Would that be like exposure therapy for social anxiety? Talk therapy and mindfulness seem like a lower profile option.
A few months ago, my husband shared an article about someone who meditated themselves into agoraphobia by practicing it for hours and hours a day. The article argued that meditation is not always beneficial, despite it being peddled as the solution to our mental health crisis. The issue with this is that moderation is a core concept in mindfulness philosophy, and in the religions that practice it, so it’s disingenuous to ignore that aspect of meditation and then complain that meditation is harmful. However, despite my protests, there was something about the story that resonated with me. Mindfulness was originally intended to be practiced within the confines of a spiritual context, and monks that practice it often seem to do so in secluded places far removed from the chaos and sensory overload of day to day life in communities. Why do they live this way if it isn’t an essential component of the practice? It makes me think of yoga, which was a religious ritual meant to be practiced only by experienced yogis who knew how to properly apply both the physical and spiritual components of it. Removing it from this context and marketing it as just a healthy lifestyle choice has helped people who may not have pursued it in its original form. But a quick online search will reveal that it has also hurt many people, sometimes irreparably.
Maybe mindfulness that is intended to bring calm to chaos should be performed in that chaos. If I lived my life in a meditation room full of candle-lit vases of flowers, ambient music, and the sweet scent of palo santo, would I really need to meditate to achieve inner peace? Simply stepping out of a room occupied by my children, with the intention of meditating, is usually enough to make me feel calmer. So maybe my mindfulness moments need to look more like everyday moments if I want them to help me through everyday life. From now on, I meditate in front of a sink full of dirty dishes. I’ll smell dinner cooking on the stove behind me, and hear the “thump, thump, thump” drifting in from the livingroom as my children leap off furniture (the way I always ask them not to do), followed by the shrieking when they trip and smack their faces on the floor. Oooooommmmmmmmmmmmm.