Whole and Good
One of the great benefits of mindfulness is that it can help us see the habits we have and then decide whether they serve us or not. Meditation helps us build our awareness muscle. Then, when we bring this awareness into our engaged life, we notice more about how we navigate life. From there, we can decide what habits and patterns serve us and which we can adjust, eliminate or nurture. We can think of this as the great partnership of Meditation and Contemplation.
I had a striking experience with this recently. The beauty of nature makes my heart sing and I often try to capture that joy by taking pictures. (Many of those pictures end up as the background for this blog). The other day I was delighting in the vibrant magentas of large, voluptuous (truly!) peonies, and the deep reds of some stately roses. In both cases, I reached for my phone to take some photos…. And both times I realized that I was pushing aside the blooms that were past their peak, trying to structure the shot in a way to capture just the “perfect” blossoms.
Noticing that this was a habit, I paused for a moment with curiosity to hold this habit up to the light, spin it around a bit, poke at it… I experimented with looking at just the flowers in peak bloom, and then widening my gaze to take in all of the flowers, including the damaged, the faded and those that had dropped most of their petals. The full picture resonated more. There was a certain tension in beholding just the “perfect” flower. There was a palpable sense of grasping at this perfection and a literal pushing away of the imperfect (to get the shot, I had to literally move the other blossoms out of the way.). There was more ease with the full picture, an acknowledgement that we can be imperfect. And, too, there was a sense of relief at the impermanence of all things: that flowers will bud, blossom and fade and so will thoughts, and emotions and events… and even ourselves.
As I contemplate this further, it seems it might be the reason that scrolling through social media images of perfect meals, perfect decors, perfect flowers, perfect pets…. fails to bring us any lasting happiness. In fact, it leaves us feeling deficient, when in reality, we are whole and good just as we are. That is what meditation has taught me over the past 20 years: We are whole and good just as we are.
We’d love to hear what awareness has revealed to you about habits that serve and don’t serve!
May all beings be at ease and may we all know as truth that we are whole and good just as we are,
Your CMP family
*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.
