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A Beautiful Arrangement
Friends (Quakers) Meeting, Damariscotta, ME
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In meditation, I suffer much. What can I do?
What are you doing?
I acknowledge my suffering and sit with it.
Then, acknowledge your non-suffering and sit with that.
What would happen if a gardener only paid attention to the weeds in her garden? She would not be mindful of all the plants needing her care. She would likely become quite discouraged, would she not? She might decide to stop gardening. She would have a weed-mind distorting her view of the garden. Then, one day, she sees all those lovely, tender plants ignored before. Would this not encourage her to care for her garden? Now, she could work with both the weeds and non-weeds to have a lovely garden. She could see the weeds are not bad; they are plants, too. As weeds, they would be okay elsewhere, not in her garden.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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In mediation, we sit with suffering or with non-suffering. Both are ways of working with ourselves for healing.
Due to immense suffering, many of us go into meditation. We want a way out. We find in quieting the mind, suffering appears magnified; we may seem to be in more distress, not less. The suffering has not increased, awareness of it has. This heightened mindfulness is good news.
All suffering arises from the repression of non-suffering. This is so, for we are non-suffering. Suffering is an overlay of our nature. Our nature is the reign of God, is nirvana.
In the basement of consciousness, there is suffering and non-suffering seeds. We can work with non-suffering by bringing to awareness any seeds of positivity - like, joy, peace, gratitude, love, kindness. What does joy feel like? Bringing up a moment of joy from the distant or recent past can help with this. You can be creative in how to bring awareness to the non-suffering qualities. This work is a good practice as a lead-in to just-sitting silently.
When I began meditation, out came joy. Joy had not been welcomed into awareness. I had gotten a message that joy was not allowable for me but depression and sadness were. I began to learn to welcome and nourish joy. It has grown by caring for it like a welcome plant in the garden. Mindfulness can be a way to nurture positivity. The positive is already there. Joy had always been with me.
Caring for the positive can help balance our awareness of suffering. We can work with it differently. With suffering, we can sit with it, bringing the light of awareness to it in compassion. Compassion is a positive quality shining on suffering. So, our compassion grows in doing this. That is one way. With this, we are not nourishing it but accepting it. In acceptance, suffering can find release. Compassion heals.
Suffering holds within itself non-suffering, so we speak of transformation. We are like skilled gardeners using everything in the garden for the good of the garden. Weed qualities are compost for the non-weed qualities we want to flourish.
In nourishing the positive aspects, we are working for its increase. In welcoming and feeling these qualities deeply, they keep expanding. The positive qualities we did not welcome into our awareness, we slowly own as ourselves to enjoy and share. When we enjoy these qualities, we naturally share them through who we are and our actions. We find, finally, we do not possess these qualities, we are them. In receiving, for example, joy, I welcome myself. We may say, "The Sun shines its light." More directly would be, "The Sun shines itself."
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox, and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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