journey

For months now, ever since developing a serious pinched nerve condition, I have thought a lot about meditation. This is a subject about which I am ignorant. I have downloaded an audio-book from Audible.com, but right now can't get it to my ipod, so I've only heard bits and pieces. I found a website about transcendental meditation, but learned that it would cost me a lot of money to hire a guru. On the Huffington Post the other day I read an article by Sadhguru about his mystical experiences.

Recently I had surgery to physically repair the condition. Although I relied on traditional medicine to cure that unbearable pain, I think meditative experiences could be beneficial to my whole life experience.

I was very depressed yesterday and called my sister, looking for a tunnel out of my despair. She asked, nonchalantly, "why not bake some cookies."

Quickly, I responded that "I don't want or need any cookies."

Thinking of her two energetic boys and of me, she said, "you could send them to us."

So today for the first time in over a year I baked chocolate chip cookies. I ate one and determined they were pretty good. (Thanks to a new stand mixer which makes creaming butter and sugar a breeze.) Family came over later in the day and determined they were awesome.

That's the power of doing things for other people, I guess.

After putting one batch in the oven, I went outside with my dog Banjo. He wanted to sniff and roll, so I relaxed on the hammock. I saw a solitary leaf above me on the maple tree covered with thousands of leaves.

I thought, is this meditation? If I focus on this leaf? Sadhguru wrote about being one with the world, being outside himself, while realizing that all of his understanding of human experience was within himself.

I focused on the leaf. What did it feel? What did it experience? What did it understand of its life cycle? How did it feel when the wind blew? What did it have to do with my experience of it?

And then the phone rang. I went inside and my sister was on the other end. I said good thing you called the cookies are just ready to come out and I would have forgotten them while I stared at the leaf.

I plan to keep working on the meditative experience!