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What can a meditation practice offer in these difficult times?

11 October 2024 | Timothea Goddard | meditation , Mindfulness Courses

Being a person is an interesting, challenging and confusing experience.  We are constantly changing, finding our feet and sometimes losing that footing. The world can be random, unfair and painful and also delightful and awe-inspiring.
So much is unknown.

What can a contemplative practice offer in these times?

Steadiness
At the outset it provides a kind of steady “home base” to rest in. We learn a practice to regularly recognise and “calm our farm” of healthy instinctive reactivity: the flight/flight /freeze/fawn response. It can help us be with our grief too.

Space to "take in the good"
Practice interrupts the negativity bias that makes us scan for what is “not OK” in every moment. We learn a discipline to be able to come to our senses, moment by moment and notice, allow and take in the good that is here, now.  Joy is here, even in these circumstances.

Clear seeing
This is profound. We live in a pandemic of misinformation, where polarisation and an “us/them” mentality is dominating our public and private lives - leading to a battle ground of extreme views and actions. Practice actively asks of us to see into and through this in ourselves too.  We see clearly our own internal dynamics of self-criticism, blame and vulnerability. Can awareness hold  two sides, and not collapse into either one?

Dissolving our rigid sense of “self”
We also live in a pandemic of the separate self. Aided by social media, we are captivated by an image of ourselves that needs to be protected and defended at all times. So much precious time is wasted - and shame and rage are the exhausting result. Practice offers space to be whole, not perfect. Practice loosens up our addiction to a rigid sense of self and our identifications – which can be revelatory.

Contemplative practice can open us to an experience of the “self “being like a verb, a generative process.  Maybe it is like a candle – an alive light, deeply inter-dependent with our environment  to keep burning. When someone else’s light goes out, we can simply offer our own to light their fire again – not condemn them for being a loser!

 

Timothea (Tim) Goddard is the founding director of Openground – an Australia-wide network of clinicians and teachers offering MBSR and related mindfulness programs, workshops and retreats, and of the Mindfulness Training Institute – Australia and New Zealand – a not-for-profit which offers teacher training and Vipassana retreats.