Meditative Stillness In A Galloping World
/Meditative Stillness
“Meditation is the journey from movement to stillness,
sound to silence.”
A lovely meme from the The Art of Living organization reminds us of the meditative process of movement to stillness.
However, because our lives are not a straight line, but rather an ongoing spiral – meditation also takes us back again from stillness to movement.
We are always in motion, but the balance between stillness and movement often becomes askew.
Our Modern To-Do List
Our modern lives are stuffed full of activities all the time. I'll bet you noticed. Upload a photo on Facebook, make sure you tweet something, email, text, call someone, watch a video. In the meantime you should also follow everyone else's Facebook posts, tweets, emails and texts.
Go to the workplace: work, work, work.
Go back home: sleep, sleep, sleep.
Go out, go in, go to, go from... go, go, go.
Hurry up and work. Hurry up and sleep. Get up and do it all over again.
Stillness does not rank high on the to-do list.
Do More With Less
In the workplace, the dreaded phrase "do more with less" is used to justify squeezing more work out of you with less staff and resources to support the workload. Instead of being a terrible thing that should be corrected, "do more with less" has become a workplace badge of honor.
"I work 16 hours a day!" co-workers yell as a battle-cry, "Look at me, that must mean I'm important!"
It's incredible how skilled we are at turning things inside-out and backwards.
Caught in the dusty whirlwind of outer activity, I picture myself galloping like a horse from activity to activity, to yet another activity, and on and on, ad nauseum. Never stopping long enough to catch my breath, to gather my thoughts, or to look up at the bigger picture.
Galloping, galloping, galloping...
Have you noticed in our fast-paced world, there is never a lack of things to be galloping to or from?
Wild Horses Galloping
But we are not herds of wild horses thundering on the Great Plains; we are humans in search of our awakening. Part of that process involves stopping, sitting with stillness and holding space for awareness in our breath. As we master stillness, we learn to bring greater awareness to our "galloping." Galloping with awareness. In motion with consciousness.
All this galloping made me think of a popular song from my youth – Wildfire. In the old days of driving down country backroads in a 3-on-the-column Rambler, the AM radio blared and Wildfire was a top hit.
Michael Martin Murphey, the songwriter, tells us much of this song blossomed from a dream. In his Story Behind The Song 'Wildfire' he shares:
“The song came from deep down in my subconsciousness.
My grandfather told me a story when I was a little boy about a legendary ghost horse that the Indians talked about.
In 1936, author J. Frank Dobie identified this ghost horse story as the most prominent one in the lore of the Southwest.”
Murphey recognized the fluidity of the symbolism in the verses and wisely resisted trying to limit its interpretation, leaving it instead to each listener.
Some of the deeper meaning in this song has to do with cycles – how we come and go from this planet. The hoot owl can be a harbinger not just of death, but of a great transition.
An aging, weathered farmer comes to the end of his life and he rides freely in the wind with Wildfire. The name Wildfire harkens to the inner fire burning brightly inside all of us.
