~ Pause
The end of the calendar year can act as an excuse for a pause. We can just glimpse and taste ourselves and the stretch of our lives--delicate, powerful--from another place. Or from "no place" along the lines of one Christian mystic's definition of God as "a great no thing." We need to disentangle from our usual occupations and preoccupations to see our lives with God's eyes, to feel our lives with the touch of "no-thing."
Here are few different kinds of pauses to try on as 2012 rolls in.
1) The pause at the end of the outbreath, and at the end of the inbreath. When we are not involved in breathing in or out, what is available?
2) A day (hour, week, month) out of the usual routine. Disengaged from the machinery of habit, what is available?
3) That fresh, breezy moment that sometimes pops through just after waking from a nap or sleep. Before we get busy with what we need to do or what we wish we (or someone else) hadn't done, what is available?
4) Gap time. Many times we do not and cannot know "what is happening" in our deepest meditation, because the "I" is not active or relevant there. Trusting that space and allowing ourselves plenty of "gap time" gives us a chance to be transformed…and grateful to our own practice for years to come. Here's to heading deliberately into the unknown by the light of trust!
Happy new year.