Meditation

“We don’t want anybody up here. We just tell people this place is nothing but a bunch of queers and weirdos,” my sponsor told me.  There is a kernel of truth in it, of course, but there is a sweetness about the place and the people there that is hard to describe.

I exaggerated about the indoor plumbing/electricity feature of the town.  Most of the people have running water.  Some of them even have HOT water.  And there is electrical service in the town which is serviced by its own small hydro-electric plant, but people don’t use it much.  Even so, it is remote.  I haven’t heard quiet like that or seen dark like that in a long, long time.

The first night we grilled steaks on a campfire. watched stars shooting through the night sky, and had dessert with some neighbors.  During the next day I listened to AA speaker CDs, CDs about the Eightfold Path.  I enjoyed the hot springs and the wilderness.  We had breakfast with friends and went for walks.  I took pictures of dead pickup trucks which are allowed to remain there to deter the Sun Valley people from discovering how wonderful the place it.  I read and napped and practiced meditating.

Why did I have such a hard time realizing that having a Higher Power does not mean having a deity?  I am more and more convinced that having a Higher Power without having a deity is necessary for me and that my path back to feeling connected to that Power  will largely be the byproduct of practice.  The small time I devoted to the practice certainly led me to believe that, as the book Alcoholics Anonymous says, “we can but clear the ground a bit” and that clearing the ground through a practice of meditation may be the hinge upon which my progress turns.

I was in a great place to begin a practice, not having the usual distractions of home and office around.  Even so, focusing on mere breath is not as easy as it sounds

“Somewhere in the process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.  Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and helpless.  No problem.  You are not crazier than you were yesterday.  It has always been this way, and you have just never noticed.”  Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

That’s a relief.  If there weren’t passages like this in the guide I was reading I would be sure, as I have always been, that I wasn’t doing it right.

Anyway, I imagine that things are as they should be, and I imagine that I am still on track, even if it does not appear to me that I am.  I just know that