Once upon a time, a long time ago, I had a misguided notion that in becoming a regular meditator, one could achieve a state of calmness, leaving old emotional storms as nothing but a distant memory. Oh, wouldn’t that be nice. Well…….I must be more enlightened now, because the events of the past few days have certainly given me insight into the reality of living with emotions.
My morning meditation was quite wonderful. Trying to concentrate on my breath, thoughts arose as they will, but it was as if they were not attached to anything, and floated back to where they came from; i.e., nothingness. What I was left with was a sense of being surrounded by a field of golden light with a corresponding body feeling of lightness.
A good way to start my travels, I thought. But the not so friendly skies of united had its own plans, it seemed. To make a long saga short, suffice it to say that caught between the recent hysteria of flying into the U.S. with limited hand baggage, and an over stressed airline check -in agent, who insisted that my wife Lucy could not even carry a tiny bag of her jewellery aboard, we were thrown into a frenzy. (It did not help later to realize that other agents had allowed people to take much larger bags aboard.) But do not worry, he insisted, it can be checked in and you will receive it at the baggage claim. By the time the turnstile stopped at our point of arrival minus her precious jewellery, we were thrown into distress.
By the second night, after many enquiries and just as many confused answers, all leading to no one knowing where our little precious bag was, I was in a state of anxiety. It had nothing to do with the monetary value of her jewellery. These were the first pieces of jewellery that Lucy had learned to make at the Nova Jewellery in Chiangmai, Thailand, and no financial settlement could replace their sentimental value. I so admire Lucy’s ability to create beautiful spiritual art, and it felt as if we had been violated in such an uncaring and needless manner.
I knew that this was a time to practice all I have learned from meditation. Surges of anger were certainly flowing through me. Pema Chodron, in her book, The Places that Scare You, talks about trying to move away from the story line ( cursing the airline agent up one side a down the other) and into the sensations of the body. To my surprise, it wasn’t anger that I was feeling, but raw anxiety in my stomach, arising from loss and the vulnerability of having personal control stripped away. Staying with the body feelings and returning to a calm breath, it went away…for awhile, only to return with a vengeance later. I practiced feeling compassion for that agent. That’s not so easy to do when one is so upset with someone, but that is exactly the time when compassion becomes so important. I reminded myself that he must have had a hell of a day with many angry customers, and with that my heart softened. Noticing feelings of self-judgment for falling into this state of anxiety, I offered compassion for myself as well. Sometimes I expect too much of myself – this wasn’t easy and it’s only natural that I’m feeling upset. The anxiety remained as strong as ever, but somehow, I felt less attached and swept away by it. With this storm spinning my stomach in every which direction, sleep was hopeless, but I knew that all emotions eventually pass away; that this was just an impermanent situation that within a few days I would be able to look at with unattached clarity. With these perspectives, which I have gained from several years of meditation, I was able to ride out the storm by simply sitting with the emotions.
The outcome? Sheer exhaustion finally took over and I fell into a sleep of the weary. The next morning, to our joy, our precious bundle was found and delivered to us. But there was a lesson in all this that was not dependent on a successful outcome. Mindful detachment is not about not feeling deep emotions, but about learning to not become victims to them, or to external circumstances that we often don’t have control over. I learned that I had the ability to weather a difficult emotional storm, simply by being with it without having to do anything, and for that I can now send feelings of gratitude to a stranger who caused us grief and through whom I was taught an important lesson.
Vancouver Island Meditation 