We read a lot about the benefits of meditation. But the true test may come in times of trauma. Here’s how meditation transformed a severe fall and a trip to the emergency room into an experience of mindful awareness.
Tag Archive: meditation
Develop Self Compassion: Meditation instructions for working with the breath
Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing on Fridays.
compassion for the layers © 2009 - 2010 Mahala Mazerov
Sometimes it’s easier to have more compassion for others than we have for ourselves.
We have feelings we think we shouldn’t have. We have prejudices we wish we didn’t have. We act in ways that disappoint or embarrass us.
Instead of pushing these down, denying them, or venting against others, we have another choice. We can work with the breath and bring our attention to these unwanted feelings.
We can practice compassionate abiding.
Here are simple meditation instructions:
When something difficult comes up, in the very moment of experience, let yourself feel whatever you are feeling. Make contact with those unwanted guests. Be completely open to them without trying to change them in any way.
At the same time, breathe in. There’s no need to force it to be a certain way. Just let your breath be as it is.
Relax any judgment you may have about what you’re feeling. Just as you’re letting your breath be what it is, let your experience be what it is, too.
When you breathe out, see if you can give your feelings more space to exist. Like throwing the windows wide open to air out a stuffy room, the simple act of breathing creates space so your feelings can move.
Breath with tenderness. With curiosity. You may even chose to notice how these feelings exist and move through your body.
Abide with compassion for yourself. Breathing in, experience what’s happening. Breathing out, experience what’s happening.
Keep practicing for as long as you like, staying present with the feeling tones and allowing them to change as they will.
Working with the breath in this way, you can learn to address all the facets of yourself with love and acceptance. You embrace yourself with compassion in spite of those things you’d like to change.
You can use this practice when you feel overcome by difficult emotions or in those first moments when shenpa arises. You can also wait, find yourself a safe space, and work with your breath as you bring the raw emotions to mind again.
The key is to remain free from the rigidity of aggression or denial. Abide in unconditional compassion. Let your mind be pliant. Recognize the magnificent, fluid being you truly are.
Tender Edges of Your Heart
Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing on Fridays.
the tender edge © 2009 Mahala Mazerov
There is a misconception, I think, that meditation and living in close relationship with your heart means your life will go easily.
But being luminous isn’t easy. It isn’t all love and light. It isn’t soft. It isn’t new age-y. And it isn’t an automatic fix for whatever hardships you may have to face in life.
Being luminous means you engage in the continual practice of meeting the tender edges of your heart.
Your love expands, yes. But it comes from including experience with darkness. Not only other people’s suffering, but personal acquaintance with the abyss. And you choose not to run away, soar above it, or wall yourself off from it.
Being luminous means you try to face darkness and light with equal presence. You strive to act from a higher awareness no matter what your world looks like at the moment.
In some sense, you learn to become comfortable with the changing states because you recognize they are just that, changing.
Now, I’ve never been comforted by the words “this too shall pass.” Maybe because they’ve been said by people who didn’t have a clue about the depth of pain I was feeling. Or were said by people uncomfortable with any kind of disharmony, who had no solutions, and wanted to quickly move on.
When I talk about being comfortable with changing states of being what I mean is that impermanence proves to you that it is not your true nature. It proves your essence is indestructible. No matter what life, the world, karma throws at you — no matter the sufferings you bring upon yourself — there is a ground of being that is unstained.
Meditation will meet you there. It will help you find it.
It isn’t easy being luminous. But meditation offers strength and steadfastness, so you can experience the most true and beautiful moments at the tender edges of your heart.
Thoughts On Giving & Receiving
Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing on Fridays.
© 2009 Mahala Mazerov
These flowers, liatris, make me think of candles. The small flowers bloom on long wands from the top to the bottom. To me it’s like flames and wax dripping down. I actually thought one name for them was candle flower, but that’s another plant entirely. Liatris are also know as “blazing stars.”
They remind me of all of the candlelight vigils I’ve ever attended — Kent State University, where I was a student not long after the 1970 shootings. Antiwar protests. Nuclear disarmament. Vigils with the local Tibetan community. Chanting for peace.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a candlelight vigil under clear skies. There always seemed an endurance test of wind and weather to solidify calling of the heart. It was so hard to keep a candle lit.
Sweet bonds were formed in those moments when we shared our candle flames with one another. No matter how soaked or cold we were, that simple act of rekindling another candle was part of what made the endurance worthwhile.
I have the flu and my candle is flickering a little. I’m doing my practices but there’s not a lot of fire behind them.
I want to tell you something that took me a long time to realize, because I was so focused on trying to save the world.
I am a bringer of blessings, but I can also rest and be a receiver. The same is true for you.
I know you have things you care about. Causes and people that depend on you. But you are not alone. You’re not the only one.
Every day there are people working and praying for the benefit of all beings. May all beings be happy and safe. May they be healthy. May they have everything they need.
It’s so easy to forget when you’re making these prayers, doing good work in the world, that you are also part of all beings. The prayers and the work are for you, too.
Keep a tiny light glowing inside of you. It doesn’t always have to be a blazing fire. Sometimes all you can do is keep a small ember from going out entirely. And if you can’t do even that, don’t worry. Someone will come along, share their flame, and get you glowing again.
When your light is flickering, for whatever reason, know at this very moment you can drink in the efforts and aspirations for your well being.
Someone is working and praying on your behalf at this very moment.
Meditation, Illumination and Plato’s Cave
Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing every Friday.
illumination. © 2009 Mahala Mazerov
When I take photographs, I work in a state of meditation and engagement. I’m searching through the lens for an image that goes beyond labels. Beyond peony. Beyond flower. Beyond petal. Until something new is revealed.
I believe there’s a dialog going on, but it’s not a verbal one. Even after I edit my shots and select the images that resonate I don’t usually have a story or a why.
In that respect, this image is different. I remember being drawn in to the luminous gold at the center. (A luminosity that unfortunately is not well conveyed here. I’m tempted to learn to play with Photoshop, but love the immediacy of printing as is with minimal adjustment.)
In that golden center I discovered a state of spiritual illumination, of unceasing meditative awareness. In that moment petals turned to turned to ice and the story of the ice caves came into my mind.
My Tibetan Buddhist lineage, the Drikung Kagu, is known as the Blessing Lineage. It is also known as the Practice Lineage as there is a history of yogis immersed in meditation that continues to this day. Many great Drikung yogis are featured in the popular documentary film, The Yogis of Tibet. (Click the link to view it free, online.)
Anyone who repeats the much overused stereotype of meditation as hiding away from reality, has never spent any real time in meditation.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet and receive teachings from people who have completed a traditional 3-year meditation retreat, or have spent as many as 12 years (!) engaged in silent meditation. Invariably they are people of great humility and humor. You might easily pass them by because they make no great show of themselves in the world. But in the right conditions you catch a glimpse, or hear a story that indicates their exceptional inner power.
They are engaged in reality in ways far beyond our minds (which run endlessly like hamsters on a wheel) will ever grasp.
In the remote landscapes where yogis and yoginis meditate in caves, there are stories of hardship and harsh weather. [Scroll for photos of Lapchi meditation cave.] Food is sparse and simple; comforts and distraction are reduced to zero. Sometimes layers of snow and ice build at the entrance of the caves. You have to break through to go out and see the sky.
That’s the story that came to me in the golden center of this flower. It’s a place that calls to me now, a place to discover illumination found at the center of meditation.
Truth be told, I feel like I’ve been too much in another cave lately. Plato’s Cave. Chained with my back to what is real, seeing only shadows on the cave wall. Shadows created by others, of what they want me to see, know, believe, buy, value. I’ve held my own fairly well, but lately I’ve gotten lost in meaningless distractions (not the soul-feeding, revitalizing variety) and in business marketing programs (as I learn to bring courses and projects to you) in particular.
I choose instead the cave where illuminating awareness is born and nourished. Then I will break free to see the sky, and create blessings.
The Friday Flower: Inner and Outer Light
Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower. A new series. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Sometimes on Fridays.
inner and outer light. © 2009 Mahala Mazerov
I had another post almost ready to go this morning, just a few tweaks needed before hitting the publish button. But after a meltdown that’s been building for days, I looked at what I’d written and it seemed too distant and controlled compared to the raw state I’m in. I offer this to you instead and promise, some day, to learn brevity.
I know without question we all possess an inner light. Our true nature is perpetually pure and unstained. But we also have thoughts, desires, emotions, egos that mask our pristine nature. Sometimes we go searching for our light, but it’s hidden behind heavy clouds and storms.
I’ve been slogging my way through weeks with my inner light almost completely obscured. I’m depleted. I’m scattered and distracted. I can’t focus my attention for any period of time. I can’t meditate. I can’t hold my center.
My acupuncturist understands and can explain all of this to me. She takes my pulse, looks at my tongue and tells me precisely why I’m experiencing this state.
That used to make me feel better. Ah, I’m not the least disciplined person on the face of the earth. Oh, this exhaustion is real and it’s not about pushing harder. Thank you, I’m not going crazy.
But it’s been too long and explanations are not helping me at all.
I believe in the absolute preciousness of this life. And every night I go to bed heartbroken and dissatisfied with myself. Another day has gone by, has been used but not used well. I am wasting my rare and precious life in meaningless distractions. All the explanations in the world can’t help me feel better about that.
I reach for the outer light that pulls me forward, the Bodhisattva path. Love and compassion so strong that one vows to free all beings from suffering. Something in my heart catches, then falls. I’ve been guiltily avoiding my meditation table. I’m not even managing the reading that fills my heart. I am failing at this, too.
All of this pours out in an unexpected call with a dear friend, Marybeth. May everyone have a Marybeth. I have never known anyone who could hold space with such love. She can find (and speak of!) the magnificence in every being. I am in awe of her.
Marybeth listens. She waits. And then she says “You’re still my role model.”
“Role model for what?” I challenge her. I expect her to come up with something that is really Marybeth in disguise. But she says…
“Grace. You carry a grace through everything you do and it is stunning.”
Because I’m just this close to self-hatred there’s no room for humility. I will own this because it’s the only thing that will save me from drowning right now.
I tell her the one thing I’ve been doing well is recognizing how completely painful this is, knowing how much others struggle, and asking to take it away from them and carry it all on myself. It’s the Buddhist practice of Tonglen, Taking and Sending. That is the grace she is seeing.
“It’s enough,” I say. “It’s everything,” she says.
It’s become so internalized through years of meditation that I don’t think about it. It’s my nearly automatic response to suffering. What continues to deepen over time is the conviction in my heart as I practice.
“I forgot. I forgot I was doing it,” I say through tears.
In that moment, outer and inner light appear in my heart. They merge. They are one and the same in essence. It’s only worldly confusion that keeps them separate. That same confusion is the cause of suffering.
May all beings be free from suffering!
Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower
A new series is born. Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Sometimes on Fridays. (Grateful thanks to Hazel Colditz for this inspiration.)
Protection. Vulnerability. Being born. © 2009 Mahala Mazerov
As soon as the idea to create this series was formed, I knew I wanted this photograph as the inaugural image.
Something is clearly being born. Everything shimmers. We catch a glimpse of the luminous yellow that is to come.
I love the way the sepals and petals remind me of Buddhist imagery of the thousand petaled lotus. Born in the mud and blossoming in purity, the lotus symbolizes the development of individual beings towards enlightenment. In Buddhist art and in meditation practices Buddhas, deities, and sacred syllables sit on and sometimes arise from a lotus. I can easily imagine a little Buddha hovering here.
Spending more time with this image, I see vulnerability. I see the tender responsibility of wishing to protect and allowing to set free.
The sepals, the calyx as a whole whose job it is to protect the flower while it develops, are not much stronger than the petals in their care. Their menacing-looking points offer small protection. The whole bud is vulnerable. It’s easily broken or crushed. But a harder exterior would trap the flower and prevent it from blooming.
How often do we find ourselves walking this line, trying to protect and bring forward a dream, a birth, an awakening? Our natural response may be to harden some part of ourselves. What we really need is the green flexibility of the calyx and the promise of the flower.
When I’m feeling vulnerable I’ve discovered what I mostly need is some small safety that encourages me to blossom. In that way something new can be born. It doesn’t guarantee everything will go easily. Maintaining mindful awareness is hard work and the decision to stay with a raw and tender heart can make that even harder. But there are moments when true freedom is born. I catch glimpses of my enlightened heart. I discover that the ultimate ground of protection is the fully-opened flower of my heart.
Your Turn To Ask, A Meditation Survey
First, let me offer profuse thanks to everyone who responded to my Help Wanted prayer request.
It was a huge leap for me to publish it out loud, all the more because I thought I was just tapping the universe on the shoulder. I never in a million years expected anyone to step up and say “I will help you with this.”
Whether you offered specifics or just cheered me on via email or here on the blog, I want you to know how much your responses made my heart soar.
Having said that, let this be your turn to ask. PLEASE tell me what you want or need to learn about meditation. Let me know how I and LuminousHeart.com can serve your heart’s desire for a life of loving-kindness, compassion and clarity.
I’ve set up a simple survey, 4 questions, all of them optional, plus space to add your own thoughts.
Click Here to take the meditation survey. It’s short and sweet, and I promise to listen.
FYI, your name will not be added to any mailing list if you take this survey. You’ll have the option to join my list at the end, but it’s completely voluntary. I just want to hear from readers and people interested in meditation how I can best serve you.
