The muddy water

I want to give some attention to the essential, yet not so glamorous side of meditation for just a moment.

When we start to direct our attention inwards through the process of meditation, we move from externally referenced beings to internally referenced beings. We stop projecting our blame and experience outside of ourself and start to take the drivers seat by accepting responsibility of our experience.

This is a process that naturally begins to stir the mud from the bottom of the lake. The mud is the accumulated stress and conditioning of our nervous system that has been there for however old you currently are now, possibly lifetimes. When the mud begins to stir it discolours the lake. The lake in this instance is our perception or pure consciousness. Now, there is some grimy, slimy, sludgey mud for many of us and it’s usually all those parts of ourselves we haven’t wanted to look at or have suppressed consciously or unconsciously (I am very familiar with this).

So when our lens of perception is clouded by this thick mud it can feel very uncomfortable and often what we refer to as ‘unstressing’. The thing is, we can’t actually avoid this, we get really good at establishing the witness during these storms of unstressing. We have immense capability to behold the storm and yet still remain present and able to meet the demands of life. This is the real flex of meditation. The ability to be in the thick of pain and discomfort, yet hold yourself in the eyes of the witness with deep love and compassion. It’s a constant dance of surrender and letting go.

A by product of this, is the clarity of perception that starts to emerge, you start identifying less with the pain and suffering and more with the ever present, unchanging witness of it all. The storms will come and go, the people and experiences will come and go, life on the surface layer of reality will be ever changing and unreliable as a tool of reference. Established in the witness (Being) we are untouched by the ever changing. We are That which is witness to all things.