MEDITATION TIP OF THE WEEK

…IS A  SERIES OF SHORT, EASY TO REMEMBER, AND BASIC TIPS ON HOW TO MEDITATE. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, IS IT HELPFUL?

Walking Meditation, Every Moment is Extraordinary!

(The work-story in this post is based on a true experience. The names and details have been changed to maintain confidentiality.)

I’ve discussed on this site why meditation is so important for living life in the moment. I’ve even shared posts on the certainty of death as an impetus to learn mediation. Now I’d like to share a personal story on why using meditation and meditative awareness as a life-skill is so vital to living a full life.

My patient, let’s call her “Beatrice,” was a kind, 62-year-old, retired office worker. Four months earlier, Beatrice had been diagnosed with renal-cell-carcinoma, a nasty and aggressive cancer with a poor prognosis. The cancer had metastesized (progressed) and had spread to her brain, bones, and lungs.

I came in on the morning that Beatrice had been told that she had a very large mass in her chest that was occluding the air-supply to one lung and would soon spread to her other lung. Beatrice was going to die, very soon. Beatrice was still in  a state of shock and disbelief when I began my shift.

I sat on her bed with  her and asked her what she was thinking about and what I could do to help her deal with the enormity of the new information. She began to share all of the things that she was going to miss out on; two new grandchildren who were on their way, watching her children become parents, sharing her retirement-time with her husband, a planned trip to Europe.

As she shared this most intimate information, she began to weep and I went teary-eyed as I listened to her talk about being a “workaholic” and having missed out on life. She had triggered in me my own thoughts of loss, of the possibility that some day, earlier than I expected, something could take me from those who I love and all that I cherish in life.

What struck me most about how she was sharing with me was that it all had to do with missing the moment-to-moment activities of life, the extraordinary nature of every day life.

Walking Meditation in an Extraordinary World

The day afer my encounter with Beatrice, I walked to work. It was a cool morning in Boulder, Colorado and I was in short-sleeved scrubs with the breeze sending tingling sensations up and down my arms.

Since leaving work the previous day, I had been reflecting on Beatrice’s plight and on my own preoccupation with striving for better health, working for a living, spendng time with my family, and trying to live a good life. I was also reflecting on the fact that even though I consider myself to be a “good meditator,” and believe that I’m “present” in much of my life, I realized that I had been missing out on some of the extraoridnary moments of life, like…walking to work.

The walk that morning was exquisite. I breathed deeply, taking it all in; the early-morning light and warmth of the sun, the cool breeze coming down the mountains, and the stillness of the day. Life was extraordinary! I was awake and walking.

Walking Meditation, Waking Meditation

Walking meditation is a practice in many contemplative traditions. The object of this practice is to use the simple act of walking as an opportunity to practice moment-to-moment awareness. Meditation is moment-to-moment awareness. Meditation is about not being distracted in the moment.

Meditation is about waking up, to the present moment, and to your undistracted mind. Walking on the other hand, is often about moving about in the world,  going from one place to another. But, what if walking is about waking? What if you use walking (and all of the “mundane” activities in your life) as an opportunity to awake to the present moment? Then, life is an extraordinary series of waking moments, one after another. A waking meditation.

Here’s a guide to walking meditation that I found on the internet, it’s pretty cool. While it was written by a Buddhist monk, it’s useful to anyone, regardless of your spiritual tradition. If you find that it doesn’t work for you, please let me know and I’ll provide you with something different.  Walking With Awareness PDF.

Every Moment of Your Life is Extraordinary

It may be a bit bold to declare that every moment of life is extraordinary. After all, how can someone who has chronic  pain or who lives in utter poverty experience life as extraordinary? Well, as it turns out, excluding extreme circumstances like torture or violence, life can be quite extraordinary, even if you’re ill and dying. What we believe will make us happy, money, cars, a good job, a happy relationship, actually may distract us from the most precious thing that we have…time!

At the end of my first conversation with Beatrice, she looked at me and doing the best that she could to smile, said, “Can’t I buy some more tme?” It was a poignant reminder that no matter how hard we try to fight or ignore it, every passing moment, EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, that passes is gone. We can’t retrace our footsteps and we can’t recreate our past. And our future is never certain.

Like Beatrice, one day we can be reveling in the thought of what we’re going to do with our grandchildren (or children, or spouse, or parents, or…) and the next day we’re confronted with the overhwelming fact that we’re going to die.

All that we’ve got in life is time. And if we can find the extra-in-the-ordinrary, then we live the extraordinary. Meditation and moment-to-moment awareness, meditative awareness, bring to life all that is extraordinary.

Meditate Now!

How To Meditate

Maybe you’ve already got a meditation practice. If that’s the case, great! Keep it up. And feel free to use all of the content from this site to support you in your efforts. If you haven’t started to meditate, begin now.

Many people don’t meditate because they believe that they need to do “something special” in order to meditate, maybe you’re one of them. “Doing something” special isn’t the case. All you need is your breath, and a few minutes of time set aside to begin your practice. Here are some tools to get you started:

This site has tons of tools for learning how to meditate and be compassionate.

I encourage you to look through the HUNDREDS of articles that I’ve written and especially check out my weekly meditation tips and other useful meditation materials provided for your health and well being. And please let me know if you’d like to discuss anything with me, have any questions or need clarification regarding anything that I’ve written about.

Thanks for visiting and have a mindful day.