Meditation – THE DAILY ROUND

Aging, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Centering, Daily Round, Discernment, Gratitude, Healing, Life Review, Listening, Meditation, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Ritual, Silence, Spirit, Spirit Level, Spirituality, Transformation, Wholeness

Life Review

October 29, 2013March 23, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

The circling world has returned me to the time of thin places and the Sacred has certainly permeated my past month, or perhaps age and effort have finally brought me to the place where the numinous is more apparent and the liminal invitations—to see thresholds into deeper ways of being—are more accurately and peacefully encountered. Of course, there are days I’m blind as a bat to the light surrounding me, and as out of touch with my spirit as I’ve ever been, but they are less, and since presence, listening, deepening, gratitude, and forgiveness have been qualities I’ve valued over material gain, I’m happy to examine my life periodically and discover if those traits I’ve treasured and quests I’ve set as worthy are being integrated into my life.

Maybe it’s autumn. There is something about its particular colors and quality of light that makes me more pensive than other seasons. It seems always to begin with a low-level anxiety, probably ancient, and I catch myself worrying if I’ve “gathered” enough to last a winter…and then the questions about precisely “what” I need to store and so be sustained come calling at my heart’s door.

Life review is a spiritual practice too often saved for the end-of-life journey. At that time, it’s a guided journey through life’s highs and lows, regrets and blessings, gains and losses, named by the one who is dying and explored deeply in order to bring greater peace and closure to the dying process. Rituals help ease forgiveness and augment gratitude, or opportunities may be revealed to heal wounds carried as painful burdens over a lifetime. I loved traveling the life review journey with my patients when I worked as a hospice chaplain, but often people are too weak, confused, or unable to complete the practice as they approach dying, and its benefits are lost.

And so I highly recommend we engage with this practice long before we face our final breath. A daily examen, a monthly meditation, or at least an annual dedicated time for reviewing our dreams and life goals, and whether the choices we’ve made are in alignment with our named purpose or will lead to imbalance, can help us live more fully and in tune with Spirit. And after the assessing, and emptying, comes the time of deep listening: what messages does Spirit bring to us for our encouragement and possible redirection?

Retreats can also help with this process, and so can a monthly meeting with a spiritual director. A friend of mine is currently writing her life Manifesto, and others have created Mission Statements to guide their journey…these are not carved in stone and can always be altered, but they serve a purpose in making their authors aware and committed to remaining spiritually aligned and awake during their time on earth. What, finally, is our Credo, and are we true to it?

Certainly, autumn brings me round to look again at who I’ve become and how true I’ve been to my gifts and spirit. The pull of the ego to conform, to “win,” to be the center of attention, to be perceived as successful by all the false measurements the world offers rather than the self-assessment I know after all these years will reveal the honest answers I need and treasure is relentless, but worth resisting. And every year, it gives me joy to see the path I’m on, the place I am, is where I’ve always wanted to be. Not that I have all the things I’ve desired, or perfect relationships, or a life without pain and disappointment, but that what I have is precisely enough and fulfilling.

So I give myself time to sit, to walk, to be alone and realign myself with those goals I hold dear. I note my success and forgive my errors, and surround myself with friends who treasure their own paths and tend their gifts. I recommit to offering back the best of what I have and look for ways to contribute to the world more of what I believe it needs to come into balance. I listen.

The worries triggered by the autumnal urge to gather and store ease as I relax into the awareness that my life is rich. The sky shines silver and the leaves glow, burnished bronze and gold, calling me forward into mystery. I embrace it, knowing my life invites my continued growth and unfolding.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.

Autumnal Equinox, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Change, Daily Round, Details, Dying, Environment, Full Moon Cottage, Gifts, Gratitude, Halloween, Home, Light, Listening, Loss, Meditation, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Ritual, Slow Life, Spirit, Transformation, Web of Creation

Autumn Heart

September 25, 2013March 29, 2020by Kitty14 Comments

The turning, tilting earth has brought us around once again to my favorite time of year. The light is gorgeous and my spirit feels lightened in autumn as well. The world sparkles, amber and bedewed, as though newly dipped in honey and rolled in stars each morning.

The 4-leggeds and I go for long walks and sniff out miracles along the trail. One day, we pause to watch the sunlight piercing through the trees, another day, it’s spider webs clinging to the bridge, or dew on long grasses, or butterflies flitting around the purple asters. The lush viridity of past months and particular summer companions are preparing to leave our environment. Life cycles are shifting and the world feels more fragile, and therefore precious, in autumn.

One late afternoon, I watched as the garden glowed with sparks of gnats rising against the setting sun…autumn reminds me how magical and brief, how unique and delicate is a lifetime.

The garden continues to yield, though she’s growing tired from the energy spent to do so; still, tomatoes are collected and stored away, as are the herbs, peppers, squash, onions and carrots. Soon, it will be time to tenderly turn the plants back into their earthen bed, an activity that, like every ending, sobers the heart and invites contemplation regarding the sacred balance between loss and gratitude, planting and harvesting, life and death.

Like a squirrel, I tend to overstock the pantry and freezer this time of year, too, always ready for desserts that perfume our home with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and vanilla, or hearty soups, and wild rice stews. It’s time to bake yeast breads and savor the smell of wood fires and apples. Of all the year’s seasons, autumn most stimulates and satisfies sensuously, or so it seems to me. The air shivers with the pungency of damp decay spiced with wood-smoke, and the leaves color our world with scarlet, gold and orange. Like the chiming of cathedral bells, bird-call increasingly resounds. Geese, ducks, and cranes flock and honk, blackbirds chorus, and crows scold and complain throughout the day. Soon enough, winter’s icy astringency will erase and muffle, utterly. Now is the time to savor these bountiful smells, tastes, colors, and sounds.

Halloween decorations are making their way around the living room and dining room. A Wiccan friend tells me that, rather than taking offense at our Halloween witch figures, she believes crones are a fitting symbol for the year’s decline; hopefully, this is a time for rendering the year’s wisdom as well. I’m creating rituals for this…to sit with the movements and invitations of the year thus far, those both pursued and rejected. Who am I now seems a fitting question for autumn meditation, before planting the seeds of Who do I wish to become for winter’s incubation.

My husband is adjusting to the rhythm of the new school year and, before he returns home, I’m off to teach second graders in an after-school program. Ships passing, and then mooring back together for the 7 P.M. popcorn party that the puppies anticipate every evening.

These are ancient autumn rhythms for us, this rising to gather and store, and to continue crafting a life that matters, to enter the dance of diminishing light, and to notice everything precious and brief before the dark of night rushes in, colder and closer each evening.

Now is the time to be burnished by autumn’s golden light and hallowed by the season’s holy mysteries, honoring the gifts offered between the green life of summer and the austerity of winter. A time for counting blessings and letting them go, for gathering in and handing out, for storing memories, sharing stories, and gentling onward sacred farewells.

Blessed be, say my Wiccan friends; merry meet and merry part…and grateful be your autumn heart.

Becoming, Centering, Daily Round, January and February adventures, Listening, Meditation, Music, Nature, Noticing, Relationship, Silence, Slow Life, Spirituality, Stillness, Transformation, Winter, Wisconsin

The Space Between the Notes

January 9, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

“Music is the space between the notes.” ~ Claude Debussy

The long inhalation of excitement and joy that begins in September and lasts through the Christmas holidays has been exhaled over the past week or so. The decorations are almost all put away—a few are “wintry” enough to last through February, along with a few that foretell Valentine’s Day—and my energy has settled deep within.

We attended a post-holiday-holiday-party and several guests mentioned their dislike for the months of January and February.

I nodded sympathetically but remained unengaged with the conversation, because I tend to love the months for their stillness and gifts of time for sifting through recent experiences, re-gathering my spirit, noticing little regressions and evolutions, and seeing clearly where I am on my journey, before heading into the new year with renewed energy. Each new year is like a musical composition my little spirit co-creates with Spirit. Twelve measures of music, or possibly 52, or 365; each a movement of its own. I’m grateful it begins–somewhat non-traditionally, I suppose–with a long rest, so I can hear the music shape itself and its themes for the coming year.

Many of the other guests at the party were teachers, however, and I could empathize with their post-holiday weariness and return to classroom routines.

January and February can be cold and the days are still brief. Their passage can be slow and uneventful and they’re rather anticlimactic, following the long season of holidays and traditional gatherings with friends and family. The crescendo diminishes to silence.

But what an invitation to be creative and start some new traditions!

Phillip and I tend to use these slower winter months to get out of the weekend routine and go on day trips. Last weekend, we traveled to the Wisconsin River area and combined an eagle-sighting adventure with a visit to a well-established and award-winning winery.

We have a few more adventures planned between now and spring break, and I’m looking forward to them. Sometimes we’re surprised by the fun a new place or experience offers and even if it’s less than stellar, we’re together and, usually, laughing.

This week, I was surprised with a visit from my nephew and his family, a true boost to the spirit. One of the gifts of working at home is being able to say yes (or, as we say in Wisconsin, “You betcha!”) to spontaneous visits.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to schedule gatherings with close women friends during these months, to share spiritual stories, practices, books, and films, and to reinforce each other’s spirits and affirm our journeys. We become so busy when the days grow longer. It might be helpful to get together once or twice a month in January and February to transfuse each other’s spirits with renewed energy and share a very-mini-retreat, helping each other get our spirits in tune for the months ahead.

Traveling through the year’s music, its rhythms and beats, its familiar melodies and new improvisations, invites greater intentionality and sensitivity from me than I was prepared or wise enough to offer when I was younger. Letting Spirit be the conductor is easier, however, and I welcome her gift of an initial multi-measure rest, because it allows me to hear her deeper song, the one she sings in my heart and bids me to dance when the music of the year continues.

(Murphy says, “I crawl under my blanket, watch Downton Abbey, and take a two-month retreat.”)

Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Community, Daily Round, Healing, Love, Relationship, Slow Life

Blessing

December 18, 2012March 25, 2020by Kitty13 Comments

May I offer joy and gentle peace today and every day. May I take time to pause before I judge, before I criticize, before I punish myself or the other with thoughts, words, and energy that is anything but calm, loving, compassionate, and forgiving.

May I remember and hold close to my heart the awareness that we’re all here together; may I help heal myself and others by remaining mindful and intentional about my presence, my needs, and others’ rights.

Everything passes; may it pass my awareness with love, and may I look for the joy, because it’s here, within and without. May I be love to my friends and to the strangers I’ll meet today.

May no one cross my path without feeling respected, worthy, seen, heard, and loved.

May I hear the invitations to transformation that call to me today, and be willing to travel the paths that will lead me to greater authenticity, deeper self-knowledge, and greater compassion.

May I be kind. May I be aware of any thought or behavior that moves me out of the state of love. May I grow in balance, wholeness, and wisdom.

May I be a force, a light, a candle in the night…

All my relations.

Balance, Becoming, Daily Round, Meditation, Spirit, Transformation

Going Inside to Play: In Praise of Idleness

February 28, 2012March 25, 2020by Kitty3 Comments

The hardest work is to go idle. ~ Yiddish Proverb

Ages ago, when I was a very young college student studying theater arts, a few of our professors encouraged meditation in differing forms, but always with the purpose of drawing our attention inward, to a place centered and still. The creative process is such a mystery that it requires these journeys inward for excavation, image work, listening, and synthesis. But this is also as true of life itself, for everyone, and always.

I have friends who yearn to meditate and engage with it as a practice but who can “never find the time,” and this breaks my heart, because I know how hard they work –almost nonstop—day in and day out, and how rarely they play or even allow hallowed moments of “non-work” to exist and open up their lives to possibilities of stillness and the kind of renewal it alone brings us.

Who has taught us to punish ourselves so earnestly? What is it we fear in encounters with the self? How true is it, finally, to equate our worth with our productivity and “busyness?” Why on earth, while we’re on earth, wouldn’t we deserve regular times of peace and quiet? What has made us so blind to the need for balance?

Why is our first impulse to condemn idleness? Part of it is due to our American heritage, I suppose, and the Protestant work-ethic that people pledge allegiance to without the introspection or reflection a mosquito gives its next bite; some of it results from bad religion, handed down and accepted without question; a good bit is derived from unique family dysfunctions that become the rhythms to which we dance till/unless we learn better music and tempos, but all of it is nonsense and fear-based. And the imbalance generated by “nose to the grindstone” thinking and behavior makes us ill, so very ill in body, mind, and spirit.

A perusal of quotes regarding “idleness” is illuminating. Among others, Kierkegaard, Chekhov, and Virginia Woolf agree that me that idleness is necessary to our health as humans; many others view it with fear and disdain—not surprising in the world we’ve created. (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/idleness.html) Idleness is not the same as indolence to me, though they are used as synonyms. Neither is “work,” as in engaging with our gifts and passions, synonymous with “busyness,” that cultural frenzy with lists and tasks and always ensuring one is a human doing and never a human being. Engagements with our passions brings us to the center and we lose track of time; busyness causes stress because it so effectively binds us to time and keeps us away from the voice and needs of our spirit.

It is lovely and necessary to create, to work hard, to use our innate giftedness, and to produce something that makes the world, the community, or family, or self, the better for having done it. But this activity and the energy expended require fruitful balance in peace, introspection, reflection, and stillness. The avoidance of this—working “harder” and running faster to evade the still small voice within—is diseased and, at its core, “inhumane.”

For several years, I worked as a chaplain in a heart hospital and came to know the “types” who frequently became patients there: the over-achievers, who whipped out their laptops and cellphones within hours after life-saving surgeries; the people so steeped in denial of their brokenness or grief that their hearts just gave out from being so cruelly “silenced;” those who were non-compliant with prescribed self-care regimens, who routinely “forgot” to take medications or engage in exercise that would restore health; and those who never considered they were spirit as well as body, and that life was transcendent as well as empirical.

I always recall one of my patients, a retired and eminent heart surgeon, who could perceive no connection between his own heart attack and the fact it occurred on the day of his wife’s funeral. He could not accept that grief or loss had any place in his well-being, and was most anxious to leave the hospital and get home to finish necessary tasks he had set out for himself. We cope and grieve differently, and in our own time, but this tenacious avoidance of connecting dots and feeling feelings was something I observed frequently in heart patients.

This is not to blame the patient for the illness: most of us do the best we can till we know better, and our bodies are machines that weaken for many, many reasons, but there is often a connection between illness and a lifetime of beliefs and the behavior patterns they choreograph.

And the thing is, our beliefs and patterns never change unless we name them, review them, assess and evaluate them through reflection and introspection…and change. And this requires what appears to be “idleness.” We need daily recess: playtime and dream dates with our spirits, and connections with the Sacred within and without.

Meditation isn’t tricky. You don’t need to travel anywhere, earn a degree, pay a lot of money, or understand another language to meditate. Books and classes are available: so is a floor—or chair—where you can sit, close your eyes, and breathe for five minutes twice a day, and then, maybe longer. Do it with a friend or do it alone. Be kind to yourself; accept your feelings; heal.

Over the years I’ve continued to meditate and explore what that means for me. As I’ve aged, my stillness practices have only expanded, and all of them can be meditative: Centering prayer, mindfulness practices, walking or biking the trail, dreamwork, sitting with the 4-leggeds, walking a labyrinth, mandala creation and meditations, sitting meditation with and without images, breathwork, photography and gardening, canoeing the river, yoga and yoga prayer, journaling, soup-making, and (yes) housecleaning—all can help me to still and focus, release negative energy and open my spirit to needed healing and joy.

There are days I prefer music and days I need silence; days when I must move, and days when stillness beckons. And there are days when lying on a blanket beneath lovely clouds or a field of stars is mandatory playtime. Don’t look for “rules” regarding how and where, or when you meditate; do look at your need for rules.

For almost 40 years, meditation has saved me, over and over, from tipping into the illness of imbalance or calling me back from it, and I have learned so much about myself and the need for balance.

“Namaste” is the beautiful Hindu word for encounter: used as a word to bless both our greetings and partings, it means, “the Holy/Sacred in me recognizes and is grateful for the Holy/Sacred in you.” One way to begin to slow down is to use this word purposefully, whether silently or out loud, as we move through the day. Seek balance. Let yourself become a human being as often as you are a human doing.

Idleness is the Spirit’s playground.

A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.
~Rumi

I have collected dozens of meditation books, but a few I return to frequently and still, are:

Meditation for Life, by Martine Batchelor

Meditation for the Love of It, by Sally Kempton

Meditation, by Richard W. Chilson

God Makes the Rivers to Flow, by Eknath Easwaran

As I’ve mentioned before, Spiritual Literacy, by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, can guide you towards many ways of deepening through self-reflection. The DVD series derived from this book is a wonderful resource for “visual and aural” meditations. Or, visit their website: www.spiritualityandpractice.com

Here’s Fr. Thomas Keating, offering an introduction to Centering Prayer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IKpFHfNdnE

And here is a wonderful resource for heart care through meditation, backed by years of scientific testing and research: www.heartmath.com

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Discernment, Listening, Spirit Level, Spirituality

Compassionate Listening

January 1, 2012March 26, 2020by Kitty7 Comments

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant…

Today, I’ve been reviewing the past year and pondering the paths before me regarding the year to come. The country and, more dramatically, my state—and my friends, in their discussions of these things—have been through such turmoil and discord this past year that I find myself focusing on a desire for the blessing of true, from-the-heart dialogue. More than anything, this requires the ability to listen to oneself and the other with conscious and deep attention.

Three years of spiritual direction training, a concurrent MA in Servant Leadership and rugged year of CPE, all emphasized my responsibility to the art of listening. For both CPE and spiritual direction, I wrote “Verbatims,” almost 75 of these over the course of those 3 years, and they have since become an illuminating spiritual practice and a way to continue deepening my listening. It turned out that at 75, I was just getting started.

Verbatims support the reflection necessary to notice what I noticed and missed regarding the other’s responses and my own during our time together, and to hold both of us in the light while doing so. Chiefly, they are tools for self-knowledge.

Meaning is sifted through many levels of listening: There is the literal dialogue, and then there are all the accompanying intonations, pauses, body language indications, eye movements, triggers, memories, and energetic pulls toward and away from each other. There are projections, denials, biases, transference, manipulations, desires, shadows and more shadows at play in any conversation. Remaining conscious to all of these dimensions so that a conversation can be between our hearts and unearth true feelings respectfully, while allowing Spirit to truly guide and be present within our communication, takes continual practice and tending, and yields continual gifts.

I encourage you to use verbatim-writing, if it appeals to you, for reflection and for deepening your listening gifts. There are people who loathe writing and for whom this would not be a helpful practice; rest assured, there are a variety of ways to deepen our listening, and I’ll be happy to share others as well.

I’ve added a template at the end of this post, and encourage to you to try using all, some, or just one part of it, and let me know your reaction.

It works like this: Light a candle or use meditative music: whatever signifies to your spirit that your time of meditation and sacred work is beginning. (It can help to have a great pot of tea and some wonderful form of chocolate to sustain this meditation!)

Still yourself through meditation, centering, deep breathing—whatever method you use, and then take time to recount a recent conversation you shared. (For me, it’s best to jot down some memories and dialogue as soon as I can after a conversation has ended, and then to wait through one sleep/dreaming time before continuing.)

Begin to write, describing the setting and energy with which you and the other seemed to enter the encounter. Then, as best as you can recall, write down the dialogue (like the script of a play). You can start with about 20 exchanges and try to build from there as you grow comfortable with the practice. It may seem daunting, initially, to recall who said what, but I assure you, if you get into the flow, the gist of your time together will also flow fairly unimpeded as you gain experience. Whenever possible, you can add, in parentheses, what body movements, pauses, tones, etc. accompanied the spoken words.

When you’ve finished transcribing the dialogue, the deep work can begin: this is the gift of creating a verbatim, for me. Over the years, the whole process has become a form of prayer and meditation that gives me great peace.

This is not about judging yourself—or the other—but about improving your ability to truly speak and hear from the heart and grant others the space and safety of speaking from theirs.

Here is the verbatim outline I use when I’m working as a spiritual director/companion, or just praying with a recent conversation. There are many other versions available; mix and match; add and discard as it serves your spirit and deepens your listening. This is always, and only, for your eyes, and meant to enhance your self-awareness and compassionate listening. Some people save their verbatims to review their growth and celebrate lessons learned; others burn them following reflection, or annually, at a time that for them is holy, as a kind of sacred offering to Spirit or to honor their commitment to a level of listening that is awake and compassionate. Always remember: this is a way to listen more compassionately to yourself as much as to the other.

May the New Year offer us wonderful opportunities and invitations to deepen our listening; and so may we, the other, and the world be healed.

Verbatim Template

Introduction (Time/Place/Person/Relationship/Context): (A good place to start.)

Record of Conversation: (Write it down as fully and faithfully as you can. Re-writing and jotting notes—all over the verbatim—is encouraged!)

Analysis and Evaluation

Movement: (How would you describe the individual, shared, and Spirit’s flow of energy from beginning to the end of this encounter? Sometimes using colors to trace these “energy flows” is helpful.)

My Feelings: (Note, in as much detail as possible, what you were feeling at each point of the conversation. Where did you feel any significant shifts?)

Other Person’s Needs: (What do you understand about the yearning and desires—for connection, healing, wholeness, relationship, etc.—of your dialogue companion? Or, perhaps the other person just stated goals and implied a need for support and a desire for clarity. Note wherever in the conversation s/he identified a feeling.)

Seed: (What would you isolate as the “important truth” of this encounter? Keep it simple and pure: what was this conversation “really” about? There may be one for you, and one for the other, that you sense and would like to explore.)

What I’d Do Differently: (As you are present to this conversation, can you identify, within your own responses/movements, anything that you would change? Remember, this is about deepening your listening: Did you interrupt your companion out of anxiety, and so impede her own ability to hear herself or follow a thought along its journey? Did you veer off to another subject? Did you re-direct conversation away from the revelation of feelings and matters of the heart and head back to the good, old reliable brain? Did your attention drift, or did you become focused on your next response and so limit your listening?

I learned two techniques in my training that I will always treasure: First, avoid asking too many, if any, “Why” questions. These can quickly turn people away from the heart and back towards the brain. Use “why” very sparingly.

And—I cannot emphasize this enough—perhaps the most integral aspect of deep listening is to learn to be comfortable with pauses, however long. Over and over, this is what has yielded the most remarkable gifts in my listening. “Let silence do the heavy lifting.” Silent and listen contain the same letters; they are close kin and powerful allies on my listening journeys.)

What did this reveal: (About each of you, and reveal about your attitude toward the other person? Did you feel hooked at any point, or resist anything shared during this conversation? This is a very important part of the verbatim regarding your self-awareness and growth)

Future Involvement and Learning: (What might you learn more about, or seek to master so as to improve the listening you offer this person, yourself, others, and Spirit?)

Spiritual Reflections: (How did this encounter echo, challenge, invite, etc., your spirit to grow? How did it affirm your journey? Are any patterns or practices made clear? If there is a theology that holds meaning and direction for you, how is it integrated into your listening? If you have a connection to an image of the Holy, how was that affected by this encounter? How has your spirit been moved by this, and do you have a sense of how the greater Spirit was—and is—present to you?)

Identity and Style: (What has this revealed to you about yourself and your way of listening, being present, embracing mystery…etc.?)

Take time to be with this verbatim and revisit it for deeper reflection. Honor yourself and the other with a blessing before ending the practice. Listen and heal; listen and be healed.

Daily Round, Discernment, Solstice, Spirit Level

Meeting Life on the Inside: Breathe In

December 20, 2011March 26, 2020by Kitty4 Comments

The wheel of the year has turned to the position we call winter; we recognize the year’s shortest day with the solstice and the “sun’s rebirth” as days begin to lengthen again. The daily round is marked with celebrations and traditions honoring sacred understandings of light-in-darkness. Winter offers invitations to explore one’s interior yearning, healing, and relationships, so we may go forth again in spring renewed, centered, and focused upon our unique forms of service and connections to our outer relationships and communities.

The word “hibernate” is derived from the Latin word for winter (hiberno: I winter) and generates the wonderful noun “hibernaculum,” which, zoologically, is the place where an animal winters, and, botanically, is the protective bud or covering a plant uses to survive the challenges of dormancy. I love that the letters of the word “hibernate” form the anagram “breathe in,” for winter is my time for assessing, deepening, and strengthening my meditation practice and more earnestly tending my dreams.

My “hibernaculum” is a small meditation room with a futon, my piano, lovely artwork created by friends, and a beautiful cabinet made my Phillip. I use it to store books, candles, discernment cards, CD’s, and a small TV for viewing the excellent Spirituality and Practice DVD series, Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life as a prelude to meditation. This room is a sanctuary I value; I suppose it’s the feminine spiritual equivalent of a “man cave.” It’s where I go to consciously “breathe in.”

Coleman Barks, the wonderful translator of the Sufi mystic Rumi’s poetry, tells of a meeting with a spiritual master who asked him, “Will you meet me on the inside or on the outside?”

Barks recalls that he answered “with English-teacherly evasiveness,” saying, “Isn’t it always both?” Reviewing his response years later, he regrets this attempt at sophisticated cleverness and writes, “I should have bowed and said, Inside.” (From The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthly Reflections of Bahauddin the Father of Rumi, by Coleman Barks and John Moyne.)

This is a time when we gather to celebrate and mark festivities of light with gift-giving. Often the gifts are mere gestures, empty of true, heartfelt meaning. How lovely if we could daily gift ourselves with times of stillness and inner peace, and encourage others to do so as well. Twenty minutes in the morning and the evening are possible; more than that, I have learned, they are necessary, wholly holy, and healing moments of the day, when I may retreat, meditate, and again meet myself “on the inside.”

At no point in the year’s turning are we more generously invited to be with our authentic selves this way: to sift through blessings, losses, lessons, hopes, realignment, and redirection. Winter speaks to my beloved inner hermit and beckons her to explore and honor the wisdom yielded by another year on the path.

It can be helpful during the time of the solstice to create a timeline of the closing year and note the patterns danced by my spirit. When was I most strongly true to myself and where did my spirit waver? Are there any opportunities to ask for or grant forgiveness and so strengthen relationships in the life I’m creating? What learning do I most desire in the year to come? What do my senses crave; what colors, smells, imagery and totems are calling; what paths are opening? What relationships need mending, tending—or ending? What gifts have been neglected or over-extended? What parts of me need regeneration and where can greater balance be restored?

I truly and happily anticipate this retreat, this time of hibernation and restoration, this annual opportunity to deeply “breathe in,” to bow to Spirit, to greet myself and therefore others with true Namaste. (“My Source/Spirit recognizes, acknowledges, and bows to yours.”)

I sometimes wonder if those who proclaim their dislike of winter are really denying–or fearing–the naked encounter with the self that calls to and from the heart during this season, and if that is the case, I’m sad for their unconscious fear of what, for me, has always been a loving boon and gentle way to welcome a new year. As counter-cultural as stillness and darkness are, entering them openly and with a candle lit by self-compassion can steady and deepen one’s orientation towards, and connection to, the Mystery that is the stillpoint at the center of our existence. Now is always the time, but certainly the winter solstice (when the sun stands still) gentles the spirit inward to gaze on the Love at its center more sweetly than any other time of the year.

May the peace, wisdom, love, and joy of the season be yours.

Catherine O'Meara

The Beginning…

September 30, 2011March 26, 2020by Kitty7 Comments

I live and write in Full Moon Cottage on the Crawfish River, where my husband (Phillip) and our 4-legged companions (Clancy, Riley, Finnegan, Fiona, Mulligan, and Murphy), along with the changing seasons and many books, provide inspiration for my creative endeavors, including essay-writing, children’s books, gardening, cooking, and photography.

I try to practice yoga and meditation every day, but often find walking the Glacial Drumlin Trail, camera in hand, a greater source of meditative peace. Solvitur ambulando: It is solved by walking! (Or, at least, it’s not made worse.)

Often, walking leads to the discovery of meaning and connection where none at first seemed apparent; the puzzles of life fall into place and the daily round becomes hallowed. Consecrated life: the supposed mundane is transformed and revealed as sacred, as is the walker…

Recently, I’ve made a commitment to live a more consciously-designed “slow life.” What is really worthy of my finest energies and attention? Am I living authentically and using the gifts I brought to this brief and wonderful dance? Can a contemplative core and spirit-level perspective co-exist and remain vital in contemporary American culture, especially given its recent devolution into rampant incivility? With the support of my husband and 4-legged companions, along with a great blessing of friends, I’m setting out on the path and open to its discoveries.

Tag: Meditation