Meditation–Acceptance

This a meditation of the analytical type designed to develop acceptance, what Buddhists call non-resistance to change. Rigid things break, flexible things endure.  Solid things stay where they are, Fluid things find a way around obstacles. If we want to endure and move beyond obstacles, we must learn to go with the flow of an ever-changing reality. How do we learn to do this?

One way is to accept new things and ideas, making your life a meditation in action. Try new foods. Travel to different places. Talk with people who are not like you. Visualize these activities, then do them.

Another way is to master a sport or hobby requiring fluid movement to excel, such as surfing, skiing, skating, dance, martial arts, tennis, golf, bowling, horsemanship, sailing and such. Then practice until all actions can be performed automatically without thinking. Fluidity and non-resistance begin with attention and acceptance of what-is, ever changing reality. The rigid dancer is upset when bumped by another dancer. The fluid dancer smiles and flows into an open space.

Now try this visualization. Imagine that you are water, a small pool of clear water at a mountain spring. You sprang from the ground and entered a pool surrounded by rocks. You wish to be more than a quiet pool, so you explore the pool and find a small opening. You squeeze through the aperture and become a trickle.

You encounter a pebble on your left and flow past it on your right. There is a pebble on your right, and you flow past it on your left. You gather your waters in a rivulet and flow on.

A rock appears on your right. You splash into it and flow left around it. Rivulets join you. A larger rock is on your left and you flow right around it. You are a stream now, flowing faster, and a boulder is in your path.

You stop for a time, but are buffeted by turbulence, so you let go, split, and flow around both sides, reuniting beyond the boulder. The stream bed steepens, and you encounter many boulders, flowing around some and over others. It is exhilarating. Other streams join you, and you become a river, flowing downward.

You reach a cleft and shoot through it into a wandering canyon, slow but deep. The canyon leads to a reservoir behind a dam where you stay for a while, gathering water from pattering rains. You will not stay still. You find an opening. Down you flow with force through a turbine, spinning the blades to power a city.

Out you shoot below the dam as a river through forests. The path becomes shallow and fast with rock below until the rock ends and you leap off the edge of a waterfall into a turbulent pool below. Now you calm your waters and quietly flow through meadows and past cities.

You feel a pulse, in and out, resistance and release, crashing waves. You flow with the ebb tide into the sea. Consciousness of being expands. You feel no boundaries. You are free.