Category: Mindfulness Meditation

Parked today at the Baptist Church, which has an entrance to the trails in White Clay Creek State Park on the south side of the parking lot.  Entered onto the Snow Goose Trail, heading east to start then turning south and parallel to Polly Drummond Road.  After a quarter mile the trail turns inland, westward bound.  Silence replaces the din of traffic at about the same time you reach a side trail called the Mountain Goat Trail.  It borders a deep ravine, filled with all sorts of fauna and flora, most prominent the enormous Tulip Poplar Trees, which are neither Tulips nor Poplars, but actually members of the genus Liriodendron, of the family Magnoliaceae.  I feel it’s a deprivation of their dignity to not name them as Magnolia trees, but naming rights were dispensed generations before I began wandering in these woods.

My walk took me over hills and across streams today, until I tired of the pathway and determined to find a more direct route to the other side of the forest, and ventured up a hill on a trail blazed only by deer.  Temperate air and lush breezes cooled the steep climb until I found an actual trail that led to a deeper and more primitive part of the woods.  Returning home after 3 or 4 miles, I resumed reading Thoreau’s essay Walking, and was stopped in my spiritual tracks by this Thoreauvian scripture:

“What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.”

As an adverb the word fain, archaic to our ears, means “with pleasure.”  Try reading the sentence beginning with “We would fain…” through to the end of the paragraph, slowly a few times.  Perhaps you can apply this to your own life.

My walk today was simply a saunter, as Thoreau uses the word: wandering to our own Holy Land, a land found within our hearts and spirits.  I meandered a bit, following an intuition honed by countless times in these forests, in a way that I suppose was quite symbolical of the path which I love to travel within my interior world.  Yet I find it becoming easier to choose my direction, as my direction seems to be becoming clearer every day.

I have come to love my retirement.  Rather than seeing these years as a time to withdraw into leisure activities, I have experienced more of the 16th century meaning of the word: a time of comparative solitude, as on spiritual retreat.  Maybe it’s all the meditation, or perhaps all the time spent counseling and teaching, but I feel more confident each day that my direction is well chosen, and that my forest walks reflect my interior world.  Walking, for me, is a blessing.  Everyday walking is secular; that is, taking a pathway among our current society and culture.  Forest walking is sacred: that is, wandering ground that is hallowed, that sanctifies.  I believe that a sacred space exists for each of us to walk, but for most of our lives we are consumed, necessarily, by the secular, by the demands to provide food, shelter, clothing and all the material needs for survival.  To find time to retire, step back and walk with sacred intent, is difficult.  But those times are, I believe, when we are at our best, and worth much sacrifice.

I’ve been a Pastoral Counselor for 25+ years in private practice and a counselor educator for nearly 20 years.  I first discovered William James when my mentor at Loyola University Maryland gave me a copy of The Varieties of Religious Experience to read during my doctoral studies.  James, along with Thoreau, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and more lately Barry Lopez and Wade Davis have been wonderful companions in both of my roles as a therapist and teacher.  A few years ago John Kaag published Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life, which instigated my investigation of James’s lectures and essays, especially his 1895 lecture Is Life Worth Living?  As Kaag and Jonathan Van Belle report in their book Be Not Afraid: In the Words of William James, James had been asked by the Cambridge YMCA to address a spate of recent suicides in the area, to which he responded with this lecture.  And his answer to this existential question?  “Maybe, it depends on the liver.”

My area of focus over the years has been community mental health, working with people suffering from painful mental illnesses and/or addictions, especially gambling addiction which has the highest rate of suicide of all the addictions.  Working with this population has made awareness of suicide and its mental and emotional climate very important to me.  At first in my mental health career (mid life career changer; I got started as a therapist at age 42) I struggled with being a “yes man;” that is, my automatic answer to anyone suicidal was “yes it IS worth living!”  While that may seem a reasonable answer it is important to remember that the person considering suicide is not usually coming at this question from a reasoning point of view.  So to the suicidal “liver” in front of you who cannot answer that question easily your affirmation of life is experienced as shaming, and often a sense of toxic shame is at the heart of the suicidal impulse.  This is especially true for people who endured trauma, neglect and abuse in childhood.  It is awful to find no reason to live and then feel shamed for having that feeling.

James’s “maybe” is not only the best response to the suicidal person, it is the correct response, once the therapist has ascertained that the client is feeling suicidal but is able to give assurances that they have neither the intention nor the means to commit suicide.  The evidence for this is found whenever any person who is not suicidal responds to the question “What makes MY life worth living?”  Inevitably every answer a person might have for that question, whether the answer is as profound as “falling in love” or as quotidian as “hiking forested trails,” involves  a “maybe” in one way or another.  There is no certitude that a certain activity will be meaningful.  It is the chance of meaningfulness, the possibility of contentment, that makes our most important values and activities most cherished.  If this is true for what makes life worth living, then certainly the answer to the most primal of questions, “IS life worth living?,” must include this same “maybe.”

Early in my career a friend of mine committed suicide.  Tom suffered from debilitating diabetes and had been told by his physician earlier that day that his life span would be less than 10 more years and his legs would soon be amputated.  That night he got drunk and stepped in front of a freight train.  I heard the news at 7 am the following morning; it stopped me cold and made me ask myself that question: Is life worth living?  and if it is, why?  I took time off from my work as a psychotherapist to gather my thoughts and manage my emotions.  It was a long and contemplative week.

The day that I returned to the mental health clinic after my friend’s death a very depressed client, a middle aged man who had lost everything he held dear in life, came in to my office and told me he had decided to commit suicide.  He stated that he knew I would hospitalize him; he expected it from me and he respected my professionalism.  But the inpatient unit couldn’t hold him forever and once released he would quietly end his life.  He wanted to tell me now to thank me for my good work, but his losses were too insurmountable so he had made his decision, which was irrevocable.

I was unguarded; I spontaneously began to weep.  Not little weeping; heaving, crying, snot running down my face, loud gasps for air weeping.  Uncontrollable.  He leaned forward and said “my God, Jim, what’s happened to you?”  I told him, crossing boundaries, about my friend who had died a week earlier.  He said something like “I can see how much you loved him.  Tell me more.”  Which I did, as he responded authentically and empathically.  Then he comforted me in my loss, and then I regained my composure.

“If I kill myself will my friends feel this way?” “Yes,” I said.  “Then I will not do this.  I cannot be the source of such suffering.  I must find a reason to live.”

I recall this story so well because I have used it to illustrate the nature of suicidal feelings with my students and interns for a long time.  I believe that what made the difference was my authenticity; I did not try to be a “life is good!  You SHOULD want to live!” kind of therapist.  Instead I devolved into the feelings of loss associated with my love for my friend, and this led to my client reaching out to help me.  And in reaching out, in actively choosing to love me in that moment he began to find reasons to live.  He began to resolve the “maybe” as he found within himself his dormant capacity to be a loving presence in the world.

I’m happy to report that my client had another good ten years of living before he died of natural causes.  He found intimate love and friendship again in his life, which had been missing.  He stayed in touch after moving out of the area, and was able to look back on his days of despair with wisdom and even some humor.  His losses from those days remained; he had hurt too many people and even attempts at amends making could not heal those wounds.  But he had come to accept his failures and find a modicum of self-forgiveness through compassion to himself and others.  He once again found the good life.

Life is difficult even on good days sometimes.  But the process of living is made more complete by finding those reasons for living over and over again.  The implicit shaming that well-meaning people, including therapists, foist upon people causes much misery.  James’s authentic face-forward approach to this question, “maybe,” is healthy because it is real.  It is a road less traveled by therapists and loved ones because it feels so vulnerable, but that vulnerability is grounded in the reality that each of us is on a journey to discover our own reasons for living.  When I can be present with a heartfelt “maybe,” the suffering soul before me experiences a level of authenticity and understanding that is healing in and of itself.  With that presence the dialog that must occur could emerge; without that presence there is only more despair and, tragically, worsened shame.  If we seek to truly help the sick soul we can only do so by leaning into the reality that life’s worth is always anchored on the foundation of that existential “maybe.”

Here is a video of another conversation with Sam Beard, this time about mindfulness and meditation. Hope you enjoy!

I have known Sam Beard since Labor Day 2016. The previous June, shortly before having my left hip replaced, I went to a meeting he had organized in downtown Wilmington DE. There were about 40 or 50 people in the meeting room, which was in a high-rise corporate office space. All of the people in the room purported to be mindfulness meditation teachers; I only recognized about 10 of them. It was a fascinating hour as Sam told us that he intended to find a way to teach mindfulness to over a billion people around the world. I concluded he was pretty crazy and went home.

A few months later I got an email from Sam’s assistant soliciting donations for the Global Investment Foundation for Tomorrow (GIFT), a 501c3 non-profit corporation Sam had started a few years earlier. Concluding that the meeting was only a way to build a mailing list, I sent a somewhat cynical email back and asked to be taken off the list. To my surprise Sam called me a few days later and asked to meet me. The only day available to both of us was Labor Day, so I trekked into his office on that morning. The next two hours were life changing for me.

I learned that Sam had a long career finding ways to make life better for people. One of his first jobs after graduating from Yale in the early 1960’s was as an aid to Robert F. Kennedy. When Senator Kennedy was assassinated Sam fell into a depression that lasted a few years. He looks back at that period as the most painful in his life. In the early 1970’s Senator Kennedy’s sister-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of President Kennedy, suggested to Sam that he should start something that would recognize the good that people do in the world. Out of this conversation came the Jefferson Awards for Public Service, which was co-founded by Sam, Jackie Kennedy, and Senator Robert Taft, Jr. If you’d like to learn more about the Jefferson Awards go to this link; you’ll be amazed at how powerfully this organization has made a change for good in the world:

https://www.multiplyinggood.org/what-we-do/jefferson-awards

Sam retired in his mid-70’s from the Jefferson Awards (he still serves on its Board of Governors) but he wasn’t through yet. He started GIFT with the intention to multiply philanthropy throughout the world, but then shifted, shortly before I met him, to his mission to spread mindfulness throughout the world. At that Labor Day meeting I realized that Sam was “the real deal” and signed on, starting on January 1, 2017, as the Delaware Director of Operations, a post I held for 2.5 years. During that time GIFT trained over 1,000 public school teachers in mindfulness, along with hundreds of mental health professionals and all sorts of helping people throughout Delaware. Our intention was to train people who could then share their mindfulness practice with the people they help. It was a resounding success.

I left GIFT in mid-2019 as Sam had decided to shift its emphasis from mindfulness to what he calls “0 to 5,” an outreach to find ways to have a positive impact on early childhood development. As usual, Sam is thinking big! And meeting with many successes. You can read about it at this link: https//:giftglobal.org/zero-to-five

In early 2022 Sam called me and asked me to help him out again. He wanted to interview me for a series of videos to be called “Ask Jim.” I was skeptical of course. But Sam was certain that these videos would have something to say that might be helpful to people. So in March of 2022 Sam and I sat down for four and a half hours to record a wide ranging conversation, that has since been edited into several video vignettes. I am posting the first of those, which concerns “Happiness.” I would be honored if you would watch it, and very happy if you would post in the Comments any Questions, Concerns, Observations, Complaints….anything at all to initiate a conversation about this topic. The video is posted below; I hope you enjoy it and please let me know what you think!

Thanks in advance! And looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Peace,

Jim

I was pondering what to write about next for my website when I picked up my copy of I to Myself: An annotated selection from the journal of Henry D. Thoreau, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer.  I’ve been reading a few weeks of Thoreau’s journal at at time lately.  Today I opened to Thoreau’s entry on June 22, 1851 and found my next publication.  This is word for word from Thoreau’s journal; I hope you find it as enriching as I did.

“We are enabled to criticise others only when we are different from, and in a given particular superior to, them ourselves. By our aloofness from men and their affairs we are enabled to overlook and criticise them. There are but few men who stand on the hills by the roadside. I am sane only when I have risen above my common sense, when I do not take the foolish view of things which is commonly taken, when I do not live for the low ends for which men commonly live. Wisdom is not common. To what purpose have I senses, if I am thus absorbed in affairs? My pulse must beat with Nature. After a hard day’s work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day. In my better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene and unquestionable wisdom which partly unfits, and if I yielded to it more rememberingly would wholly unfit me, for what is called the active business of life, for that furnishes nothing on which the eye of reason can rest. What is that other kind of life to which I am thus continually allured? which alone I love? Is it a life for this world? Can a man feed and clothe himself gloriously who keeps only the truth steadily before him? who calls in no evil to his aid? Are there duties which necessarily interfere with the serene perception of truth? Are our serene moments mere foretastes of heaven,—joys gratuitously vouchsafed to us as a consolation,—or simply a transient realization of what might be the whole tenor of our lives?

To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind; there is the calmness of a stagnant ditch. So is it with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity! obtained by such pure means! by simple living, by honesty of purpose. We live and rejoice. I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it? The luxury of wisdom! the luxury of virtue! Are there any intemperate in these things? I feel my Maker blessing me. To the sane man the world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.”

This is worth reading and reading again. His mind is sauntering, a way of being in the world that Thoreau particularly valued. He starts by noting that the tendency to “criticise” emerges “by our aloofness from men and their affairs” which culminates in being “enabled to overlook and criticise them,” hardly a generous way of being. He meanders through ideas and observations, and finishes with “I feel my Maker blessing me.”

I have chosen this year to live intentionally in a Thoreauvian way. Once again he teaches us how to live and live well.

PS While traipsing around White Clay Creek State Park today I came upon Snowbells in full glory! Nature.

Up until January of 1968 the first 13+ years of my life had been uneventful.  Mostly I played baseball, stickball, basketball, and football, while attending elementary school somewhat reluctantly.  Despite my lackadaisical effort at school I was an honor student, but being a baseball all-star meant much more.

On January 19, 1968 while playing basketball at an outdoor court I felt a pop in my lower right abdomen as I went up for a rebound.  I thought nothing of it as I had gone up for the ball with my back to the basket arching in a way that stretched my abdominal area to its limit.  Probably a pulled muscle.

That night I ignored the worsening pain; the only thing to discuss in our house that night was college basketball’s “Game of the Century” (yes, that is what it was being called) to be played the next night in the Houston Astrodome.  Elvin Hayes (the “Big E”) vs. Lew Alcindor (soon to be Kareem Abdul Jabbar); #1 ranked UCLA vs. #2 ranked University of Houston.  The two leaders of these teams would go on to have enormous success in the NBA, with Abdul Jabbar eventually surpassing Wilt Chamberlain’s career scoring record.

But by late in the evening I could not ignore the pain any longer.  Our family doctor made the house call, which was common in those days.  He reassured my mother and father that my diagnosis of a strained muscle was correct.  He’d call in the morning to check in on me.

He did more than call, he stopped by the next day.  Despite my fever he maintained his diagnosis and advised rest, heating pad, and aspirin, which were all applied.  By 4 pm the pain was excruciating; I was curled up in a tight ball on the couch.  My father carried me to the car, told mom to call the doctor and tell him he was on the way to the hospital.  Bloodwork showed my white cell count to be over 20,000; over 11,000 is very high.  Most importantly I “failed” the rebound test: press in firmly on the right side of the abdomen and get no pain, then release suddenly and the pain is horrific.  Correct diagnosis: ruptured appendix.

By the way, that IS what the standard test for appendicitis is called: the “rebound” test.  Considering my experience the day before, pretty ironic.

The emergency appendectomy performed that night went without incident, but the surgeon failed to put a drain in me, normal procedure for a ruptured appendix.  For the next seven days I was dying.  I’m not being dramatic here; I was dying.  On the seventh day a doctor reopened me without anesthesia in my hospital room, expressed a foul smelling slime from my abdominal area and stuffed a drain in me.  By that afternoon my fever was dropping and color returned to my face.  Nine days later I was discharged, “healthy” again.

Except I wasn’t.  I had become what William James nearly 70 years earlier had called a “sick soul.”

_________________________________________

I returned to school in mid-February.  My 8th grade teacher, Sister Helen, assured me that I had nothing to worry about concerning making up my school work.  It was the first time I felt any appreciation for my academic skills.  I walked with a limp; I could not stand straight, adopting a sort of Z-shaped posture.  I had lost 20 pounds from a body frame that did not have a spare 20 pounds to lose.  Baseball tryouts were a month later.  I could not run by then.  I could barely throw, and swinging a bat hard was out of the question.  I made a team based on my reputation from my final season of Little League but that next season I mustered only two hits.  I felt lost; I began to wonder “who am I?”  By the summer of 1968 I had no answer to that question.

As a therapist I’ve been guided in much of my work by William James.  In 1890 he published the first American Psychology textbook, The Principles of Psychology.  It is still a landmark.  In his text James articulated his perspective on what it means to be a “self.”  James espoused that we have a “material self” at a most fundamental level; our bodies and material fortunes.  Surrounding our material self is our “social self,” “the recognition (one) gets from his mates,” which includes our friends, family and others.  And he posited that there is a “spiritual self” that transcends these other selves and is least frequently experienced, yet is most essential to our being.  I have found this conceptualization useful as a therapist, including the inevitable therapy I have had to do with and for myself.

In early 1968 my material self dissolved in a fever of organic dissolution followed by the loss of all certainty and vigor derived from my athleticism, which had been the central organizing principle of my identity in those early years.  My dad played minor league baseball in the Brooklyn Dodgers organization; being a baseball player was one way to connect, and connect deeply, with him.  That part of my “self” was gone.  My friendships, my playmates, all of my associates were known through my sports.  Mostly gone as well.  I entered my teen years, that period of time for identity formation according to Psychosocial Developmental Theory, with nothing to call “my self.”

Or so I thought.  My freshman year in high school at an all-boys Catholic High School was awful.  I sat alone in the cafeteria most lunch periods.  I limped through Phys Ed.  I ruminated; the depression filtered my mind so strongly that I could not even make a nominal effort at schoolwork. I managed to pass my classes, that’s all.

Sophomore year was better, as my material self had healed by then.  My social self began to heal, but I was so, so lonely.  The high school was a 45 minute bus ride from my hometown, and none of my friends attended.  Those first two years lasted a lifetime.

My third year started off the same, but my Junior year Theology course was taught by Brother Peter Russell, who was the first teacher in that school to recognize that something had gone wrong in my life.  He reached out to me.  He forced me to go on a weekend-long retreat that fall with a great bunch of my fellow students, who had been largely unknown to me.  He engaged me, as he engaged us all, in serious conversations about what it means to be Catholic, to be Christian, to be engaged with the needs for social justice in the world.  While my material and social selves were in abeyance, my spiritual self loomed, waiting to be initiated and invigorated.  Brother Peter struck the spark that kindled this awakening.  My spiritual self became my driving force.

My life story since 1970 has had many twists and turns like anyone else’s.  As my sense of a material and social self returned I experienced normal highs and lows.  I made mistakes along the way, but I also made great choices.  My life has been anything but a straight line to where I am now, but there has been one rather constant force: my experience of this spiritual self that William James writes about.

I look back at the disaster of my ruptured appendix realizing that it could have led to tragedy, but through my good fortune to have parents who provided loving care and then a wise Theology teacher, it turned out to be a godsend.  Those two years of feeling lost were a necessary loss.  Without the loss of the material and social selves that I identified most strongly as ME, I’m not certain that I would have stumbled upon my spiritual self.  Maybe I would have, but maybe it would have taken much longer.  I can’t say for sure.

All of these memories have come back to me this week as a result of several stimuli.  First, I’m spending my time this year reading Thoreau, Emerson, and William James.  I guess you could say I’m in a “transcendental state of mind.”  This past week I’ve been through a few days of deep discomfort from Covid (my first bout with it), though I’m substantially recovered now.  Then yesterday while reading I came across this passage in Pico Iyer’s new book The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise.

“The pursuit of happiness made deepest sense, I came to think, when seen in the framework of the Eastern awareness that suffering is the first truth of existence.  Adam and Eve had to quit Eden if only so they could learn to resist the lure of serpents.  Much as the young prince who became the Buddha had to quit his golden palace in order to confront the facts of sickness and old age and death.  A true paradise has meaning only after one has outgrown all notions of perfection and taken the measure of the fallen world.” (italics added)

“Suffering is the first truth of existence;” I learned that at age 13.  Then I “had to quit (my) golden palace in order to confront the facts of sickness….and death.”  Having taken the measure of my fallen world, I was able to begin to see a true paradise, which turned out to be in service of social justice in this broken world.

It was all a necessary loss.  I look back on this period in my life now and smile about it.  I’m grateful for it.  And I wonder if you, the reader, might be able to look back on a time in your life that was filled with loss as a time that may also have swept away unnecessary layers of self, leaving behind that which was most essential, that which is spiritual and transcends this material world

On Friday it started with the sensation of having to clear my throat over and over again.  By Friday afternoon it was a sore throat; not severe, but noticeable.  On Saturday morning it was a slight fever and a sore throat, prompting administrations of an at-home COVID test (negative result).  By Saturday afternoon and evening the fever was troublesome but the sore throat had passed.  On Sunday morning it was the nasal congestion and the fever that suggested a second at-home COVID test, this time positive.  A visit to the nearby Urgent Care confirmed the diagnosis.  Since then soup and tea, rest, and William James have been my prescription.  Fortunate for me that my version of COVID appears to be “mild to moderate;” in other words, annoying but tolerable.

And who better to spend sick-time with than William James!  His work remains transformative to my field, mental health, and has been transformative for me both personally and professionally.  A list of his contributions to the field of Psychology and Philosophy would take up several pages.  If you are interested in reading his work I would recommend these essays (and a book) as starting points:

1. “The Will to Believe” (available online for free at many sites including http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~jp6372me/THE%20WILL%20TO%20BELIEVE%20.pdf)
2. “Is Life Worth Living” (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Is_Life_Worth_Living%3F_(James))

These two essays in their entirety may be more than you want to read.  So my third recommendation will make this easier for you.  My current reading of William James is in an excellent new book titled “Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Word of William James,” edited by John Kaag and Jonathan Van Belle.  Excerpts from these two essays and many more are included in this book, along with introductions to each reading from the editors.  It is a fine way to begin getting acquainted with James’s philosophy and psychology.

The title of the book is derived from the final paragraph of “Is Life Worth Living:”

“These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

I have found this to be true throughout my life.  What I believe shapes my reality and, at times, creates my reality.  For me, shaping my belief has come down to a simple but profound insight: “As I hear myself speak so I come to believe.”  Gandhi speaks wisely of the consequences of managing your thoughts in words that, I suspect, William James would have strongly endorsed:

“Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.”

That’s all for today.  With COVID comes fatigue, so I think I’ll return to my reading and my tea for now.

Henry David Thoreau died in May of 1862 from tuberculosis.  One month later his essay “Walking,” which proved to be one of his most beloved, was published.  It opens with these words:

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil–to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”

I retired from my private practice as a Pastoral Counselor in October of 2021.  I decided to take a slower year, making few decisions regarding the course of my life, recognizing those decisions that life makes for me along the way and simply navigating whatever pathways emerged in time.  I was not disappointed; life has a way of filling open spaces without my help.  During this past fifteen months I learned much about myself: that I love to teach, engage in conversation, read, contemplate what I’ve read, but most of all that I love to walk in the woods.  I learned that I feel most alive, most myself, when in awareness of being “part and parcel of Nature.”

Yesterday was a fine example.  White Clay Creek State Park (https://destateparks.com/FieldsStreams/WhiteClayCreek) has miles of trails through pristine forests.  The Lenape Trail winds its way along the creek, then off into the forest, across a field and Fox Den Road, doubles back to the forest and eventually circles back along the creek and to a parking area.  After hiking four or five miles I returned to my car refreshed and tired at the same time; a glorious combination of feelings.

When I started walking after my retirement it was with the intention to generate aerobic exercise.  At my age (turned 68 last October) that matters, at least to me.  But during the year my pace of walking has slowed without my consent nor my intent; it just slowed down.  My walking became my mindfulness practice, or at least an important part of it.  I wasn’t certain what was happening until I read Thoreau’s essay again, especially its second paragraph:

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.”

When I go a sauntering I see things that I might have missed otherwise.  In the winter woods the grays and browns dominate.  Much of the tree bark is silvery; lacking leaves this is the prominent feature one notices throughout the forest.  Hidden among the tree trunks are the Christmas ferns, looking as alive and green as in the springtime.  Then there are the holly trees, boldly green with red berries and hungry birds feasting.  Looking across the canopy of trees the tan leaves on the Beech trees still cling, adding a contrast to the silver and gray of the tree bark.  The cedar trees too; verdant throughout the winter.  Lacking leaves the wind stirs more easily and sounds carry across the forest, mostly birdsong, occasionally squirrels digging for nutty gold.  

I find myself walking slower and slower these days, not from fatigue but from wonder.  It’s perfect.  There is no need for human activity out here.  Sounds of machines left far behind; occasionally another walker, sometimes with a dog, passes by.  Smiles come so easily out here, greetings, sometimes conversations, spontaneous, often of things that matter.  I am relaxed now, mindful, awake.  I leave the forest refreshed, ready to be with my loved ones again.  It is like returning from a voyage to a far away land; much to talk about, people you long to see.  Yet I’ve only been gone for an hour or two.

I have always avoided making New Year Resolutions.  But this year I’ve made one: to live a “Thoreauvian” year.  Reading his essays again, finding another wonderful biography (Laura Dassow Walls’ “Henry David Thoreau: A Life”), savoring a paragraph from one of his essays and then contemplating it on a walk or a meditation.  His spirit fills me.

This Holy Land Thoreau speaks of is found within.  The journey is to the inner regions of mind and spirit.  It reminds me of the Japanese poet Basho and his travel journal “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.”  Basho’s journey to the “Deep North,” like Thoreau’s to the “Holy Land,” is an exploration of interior spaces: the mind, the heart, the spirit.  In these times I experience silence; sometimes for just a moment, sometimes for many steps, many breaths.  In his book “Thoughts in Solitude” Thomas Merton wrote:

“To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over that land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence.”

Silence has a best friend called Listening.  Sigurd Olsen captures this well in his book “Listening Point,” an exploration of what it means to exist within wilderness:

“Only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard.  Everyone has a listening-point somewhere.  It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but some place of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.”

Walking and Silence.  Listening; finding Nature, the wilderness, within.  These are my intentions for this year, maybe for this life.  This is my journey this year.

During the past year I have not posted on my blog.  I was not certain whether to continue writing or not.  I’ve decided to post again, to see if I have something to say that may be worth saying.  I was concerned that any desire to post may be driven by personal pride, hubris.  Again, from Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude,” there is a warning about this sort of pride:

“When I speak, it is a demand that others remain silent so I alone may be heard. When I am silent, I hear my true self and reach my soul. When I am silent, I hear with a caring heart. Silence teaches us to know reality by respecting it where words have defiled it. If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything because we have said everything before we had anything to say. . . . .”

I will be posting again this year.  I intend to do so in response to my sauntering, and from a place of silence, and from what I have learned by listening.  My hope is that my words will be useful, caring, from my true self.

You can read Thoreau’s published material, including “Walking,” at this website:

https://www.thoreau-online.org/major-essays.htm

The first time I taught Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was during the summer of 2006.  I had just completed my mindfulness teacher training at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness a month earlier.  I was confident in my skills, having worked as a therapist for several years and become comfortable with discomfort.  At the same time I was nervous about this first class, mostly driven by my concern to provide a helping experience.  In addition, the only guided meditations I had led to that point were in my teacher training, and all of the “students” I was “teaching” were experienced meditators.  So this first class was a leap into the unknown.

I had managed to recruit 15 attendees, and rented space at a local Catholic retreat center called Jesus House.  The owners, Chris and Angie Malmgren, created a safe, quiet, pastoral setting that was clearly Catholic in culture but not overwhelmingly so.  The room I used was a stand-alone small building facing an open field with lots of windows and light streaming in from the west.  In the early afternoon the room was resplendent, truly a peaceful place to meditate and address stress related issues.

After introductions were concluded we started our first meditation, which was a sitting meditation lasting 15 minutes.  None of the attendees had any experience with meditation; all expressed concern that they “wouldn’t be any good at it,” a pretty typical reaction from most non-meditators.  After assuring them that all they had to do was sit and follow the sound of my voice as I directed their attention in a mindful way, we commenced that first meditation.  The room became quiet; perhaps better to say the room was enveloped in stillness.  Everything felt right.

Five minutes into that first meditation the landscaping crew arrived and began their work.  Four large mowers, the kind that one rides standing on the back portion of the blade housing, were moving at a quick pace around the grounds immediately outside of our room, engines roaring in unison.  The sound was deafening; I nearly had to shout to be heard above the din.  I began to feel panic; this ruined everything!  I took a breath, noticed my body’s reactivity, noticed the sounds, noticed my mind.  With no application of reasoning power or logic, I heard myself say:

“Continuing to follow the rhythm of your breathing, seeing if you can also be aware of the sound from the mowers alongside the sensations of breathing.”

I let go of my need for silence in the room.  I kept breathing, noticing.  I heard myself say:

“Noticing if you’re having feelings about the mowers’ sounds.  Perhaps being OK with those feelings.  Then gently returning your mind’s attention to your breathing.”

I let go again.  I was breathing, noticing, accepting.  I heard my mind’s voice say “Noise is just noise, there is no ‘good meditation’ or ‘bad meditation.’  There is no ‘good noise’ or ‘bad noise.’  Are you awake right now?  Are you breathing?”  Then I heard myself say:

“In a few moments we’ll bring this meditation to a close.  Using these remaining moments to be completely present with your body, your breath, your mind.  Noticing whatever is present and seeing if you can be OK with all of it.”

I sensed how calm I felt.  In control.  I sensed how powerful this short meditation had been for me.  I had let go of the “necessary” outcome.  I had just let myself be present.”

After everyone returned their attention to the room, with the mowers still at work, I asked what it was like to use their minds that way.  The summation of responses was clear:

“When the mowers arrived I thought “well that ruins everything!”  But I learned to just notice what is happening in each moment; to be ok with whatever comes to my awareness.  Every moment, it turns out, is worthwhile.”

At that moment I knew that I could teach this skill.  I am so grateful to those landscapers!

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When I tell people that I teach meditation the most common response I get is “Oh, I’ve tried to meditate.  I can’t do it; I’m terrible at it.”  This response makes sense in the context of how meditation is represented in the popular press and media, but it misses the point.  There is no “good meditation” and “bad meditation.”  Either you are meditating or you are not.  Actually, I prefer to say either you are mindful or you are not.  When I choose to meditate in a formal way my mind becomes focused and non-judgmental; in that moment I am meditating.  A few seconds later my mind wanders into “story land,” or perhaps I may feel a judgment arise about myself or someone else or some thing that comes to my mind.  In those moments I am not mindful; I am not meditating.  Then I notice I am in story land and take a breath; I’ve begun to meditate again, and will continue until the next time my mind wanders back to story land.  It can go on like that for quite a while, but the more intention I bring to my meditation session the longer the mindful periods persist and the more able I become to notice when I am not mindful.  This is a skill that can be developed with intentionality and discipline.  That’s up to you.

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So you might want to try this simple way to introduce mindfulness to your day-to-day experience.  At the beginning of your day commit to the intention to ask yourself this question from time to time:

“Am I breathing right now?”

It’s a pretty simple question to answer.  If your answer is “no,” then you have bigger problems than meditation can resolve!  Your answer, of course, will be “yes” most of the time.

When you stop to ask yourself this question, you’ve become mindful.  “Yes, I”m breathing.”  Now in that mindful moment look around, perhaps within your body/mind or perhaps around you.  Notice something: a pleasant feeling or taste, a relaxed body, the breeze on your face, the feeling of sunshine, a friend or a friendly face, the laugh of a child…..  The list of possibilities here is endless.  In that moment that you’ve said “Yes, I am breathing” take another moment to notice something else, staying fully present with whatever it is.  Maybe for a few seconds, maybe even a full minute.  Or, if you’re feeling radical, just stop whatever you’re doing, put away your phone, push away the keyboard, lay your pen on the table.  Stop and stay present with whatever you found when you noticed you were breathing.  And when you’ve fully embraced that moment of wakefulness do something really radical: Smile!  Now notice how that makes you feel.  Then let go of the smile and return your attention to the events of the day, until the next time you notice your mind wondering “Am I breathing right now?”

Who knows, you may find the experience to be so pleasant, so helpful, that you begin to set aside time to do this simple exercise.  And then your response to the next meditator you meet will be “Me too; I like to take time to be mindful as well!”

Peace!

Jim