My Kelp (and Octopus) Teacher

Have you ever stepped into the water at the beach and tried to stand perfectly still?  Even the gentlest waves test one’s balance if you remain rigid, and you eventually lose your footing or become exhausted.  If, however, you allow yourself to bend and flex with the movement of the water, you can enjoy a sense of buoyancy, ease and freedom - your time in the water a boost to your sense of well-being and joy.

Life is the same way.  If we meet it with rigidity, holding firm to expectations or wishes for things to be a certain way, we easily lose our balance or become depleted.  Instead, we have the ability to bend and flex, to move with the undulations of life.  We can imagine that we are blades of kelp, rooted in the ocean floor, but swaying gently in the waves.  

A meditation practice that can help us cultivate this fluid response to life’s waves can go something like this:

We can begin by bringing attention to our breath, feeling it like waves, moving in and out of the body.  We can allow our body to move freely with the breath and bring our attention to what it feels like to move with the waves, the sternum rising and falling, the sides of the body expanding and contracting, the belly moving in and out… Getting as familiar as possible with this sensation, noticing how it feels and developing trust in our ability to be with what is arising. Similarly, we can bring attention to sounds as they arise, allowing them to follow their path from silence to sound to silence again, sensing into our ability to abide the sounds, whether they are pleasant, neutral or unpleasant, even, perhaps, noticing that what makes a sound unpleasant is often simply the way we are reacting to it.  Finally, we can bring attention to the thoughts that arise in our practice, not wishing that they would cease or needing to direct them in any way.  Noticing them as they arise, and noticing how they fade when we focus our attention on something else, such as the gentle movement of the breath.  

There can be a sense of relaxed freedom after a practice like this, a sense of trust in our ability to meet life’s waves with flexibility while remaining rooted in our values.

If you’re looking for an inspiring movie that touches into equanimity, we highly recommend My Octopus Teacher, a documentary that follow's one man's exploration of the life of an octopus in a kelp forest.  We can consider with awe the film maker's ability to show up for each day of filming, not knowing what was going to unfold, but being flexible enough to harvest its richness, even if it went differently than planned.

Hoping that you will join us this week in person, by conference call or by Zoom, or virtually via the many recorded meditations on the website. Click here to see our full schedule.

May all beings, without exception, trust in their ability to move with the flow of life,
Your CMP Family