Olympic Awareness
Mindfulness invites us to look at the lenses through which we experience the world. You can picture yourself taking off a pair of glasses and looking at them rather than through them. When you take the glasses off and look at them you realize that they are just a pair of glasses. They can be taken off, or changed for something that produces a more accurate perception of the world.
But sometimes we’ve been wearing the glasses for so long we forget we have them on. Even if we realize we’re seeing the world through a lens, it might also be a bit scary to take off something that we have come to believe helps us.
The Olympics can serve as a highly effective means for us to look at and assess the usefulness of three lenses we may be using.
As we check in on the medal count by country, rooting for athletes from our country, maybe feeling less interested in athletes from other countries, and maybe even rooting against athletes from certain countries, we have a rich opportunity to acknowledge that the random fact of where someone was born or lives determines how we are feeling toward them. Had an opponent been born at a different set of geographic coordinates, we might be rooting for them instead of against them. We can recognize that what makes someone a loved one, or a rival, or someone about whom we’re indifferent is largely determined by causes and conditions that are often quite arbitrary.
The Olympics also shows us that no one gets to the top of their field on their own. Parents, coaches, teachers, teammates, donors, fans, officials, and even…. opponents…. make essential contributions. Each time an athlete climbs onto the podium to accept their medal, there are thousands of other people standing up there behind them. In our lives, when we accomplish something, we can stop and rest in the awareness of how many people - known and unknown - contributed to our accomplishment. Credit isn’t like pie - sharing it with others doesn’t mean we get less.
Lastly, we may see the world through a lens that casts failure as a bad thing, rather than as a chance to start over with more wisdom. Every athlete in the olympics had to pass through some form of defeat on the path to victory - it’s an essential part of the journey. The next time our mind wanders in meditation, we can notice if our initial reaction is to see it as an indication that we are a “bad” meditator, and then we can smile, and know that escorting the mind back the present moment has strengthened our focus muscle.
May we all feel united on a common team, know the support of multitudes, and sense into our inateresilience,
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.
