“For just a moment can we stop thinking about our lives and instead find the courage to actually inhabit them? Can we begin to feel our feet on the ground? Notice what’s happening in our thinking? Sense our bodies instead of running away from them into addictive, distracting behavior? Hear all the sounds happening around us? A bird singing. The buzz of the refrigerator An airplane in the distance… This is true meditation: not trying to enter into some altered state but finding the courage to live – to hear with fresh ears, see with unprejudiced eyes, taste the moment as if it were the first and only one in existence. And then, underneath the cacophony of our lives, perhaps we can touch that sacred place that has remained unchanged since we were born.”
Wait a minute, did Jeff Foster who wrote the words quoted above just equate meditation with hearing the song of a bird, the buzz of a refrigerator, and the hum of a distant airplane? I thought meditation consisted of sitting in the lotus position sans thinking, following the rhythm of our breathing, and possibly using incense, icons, candles, mantras, and the like to arrive at nirvana.
Traditionally understood, meditation is an intentional time of quiet that may include some of the elements just mentioned; however, the purpose of such a practice is not to achieve an “altered state,” but to help us become alert and attuned to the earthy sacredness of life. I believe this is what Foster means when he writes about inhabiting our lives; it is a matter of sensually experiencing what it looks, sounds, smells, tastes and feels like to be alive.
This way of living is no small challenge to those of us who surf the surface of our lives. We are often in such a hot hurry to get where we’re going and to finish what we’ve started, that we fail to sense the preciousness of the present. It may be naive to think that after reading Foster’s take on meditation we will begin to stride unhurried through our days. But if we just pause periodically we may find that over time we ripen in the ability to notice our surroundings, and in the noticing, that we become less frenzied and more calm, less worried and more trusting, less self-critical and more in touch with an inner-innocence that has “remained unchanged since we were born.”
Attuned to Soul 