This was one of my first attempts to try to say what meditation is sometimes like, what it has been, for me. I think there is too much hushing of one another concerning what happens when we meditate or pray, too much trying to be appropriately this or that about it. As if, should people actually talk about in the open, it will disappear.
One way that made sense to me was to follow my heartbeat as I noticed myself gently rocking back and forth as I sat. There seems to be this balance between serenity and the drive to do something, go somewhere, PUSH! But it can be confusing because they seem like opposites, right? Yeah, like walking with your left foot first and then your right foot. Right and left may be opposites, but we walk with our feet--they don't worry about opposites. So, yeah, push, it's okay, but go ahead and mix in some serenity too. You may find freedom. Our hearts are made to neither just clench or unclench.
People rarely say much
that means much.
But in the repetition
you hear rhythm.
Instead of running off to
find something new, as always,
you sit still for hours, waiting,
without knowing why.
The invisible red tide pushes
forward and back, forward.
You hear the ocean in your ears
along with old thoughts.
New thoughts try to emerge,
are knocked down, dragged back.
They can't survive for long in this air.
We find our balance by falling,
our strength in getting up again.
There's certainty in resilience,
release in floating out to sea.
You think your heart is confused:
this way, the other way, no--this way!
With each beat, another thought, old or new.
Each wave pushes and pulls the same.
Be led by that confusion.
Your heart is consistent.
Every beat is a new encouragement,
a new way of saying, repeating:
in this, in that, in all others,
in this one through eternity,
your balance is here, in this--
You are free. Be free.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz