My grandmother meditated.  She would settle into her wooden porch swing above her meticulously planted flower garden with roses and four o’clocks and a birdbath in the center of a preened lawn and just sit.  She wore her flower print, knee-covering dresses, her long gray hair twisted up in a bun with hair pins and when I’d be invited to join her, it was understood that this was a moment of silence.  Of course she never would have called it meditation, but that’s what it was. 

She thoughtfully planted the right flowers to attract hummingbirds; blue birds and robins played in the water of the bird bath.  It was a moment of paradise where we didn’t have to do or say anything.  We just sat there in silence being human beings. 

Years later, everybody started to talk about meditation as if it were some imported practice from the East, but it’s been a part of human heritage since the beginning of time, I suspect.  The one thing about my grandmother is when she finished with silent sitting and broke the quiet time with a gentle word, she’d look radiant and recharged.  This was her way of recharging her batteries and refilling her well.  She always took time out to stop and sit for a few minutes and just be.

            Refilling the well is about finding your silent space, which Joseph Campbell refers to as “sacred space” and cultivating it for creativity.  As writers we tend to work a lot with the masculine mind – to force and will things into being with our mental capacities.  But there’s also the feminine mind which thrives on just being.  The answers just come in a moment of silence, in a moment of chopping onions in the kitchen or while out on a walk thinking of something totally different.  The ideas, the solutions to our next plot point, just pop in as if out of nowhere.  This is the intuitive mind.  It’s there always working, even during the night in dreams, while the conscious mind rests. 

            So we want to find a way to actively cultivate this feminine mind, this sacred space and use it for writing.  In my mental picture, I see a source, a fountain or a well at the core of my sacred space.  It never runs dry.  It’s always flowing, giving more and more water.  I schedule a regular time each day to sit and listen and take regular walks in nature. 

            How do you refill your well?

copyright: Debra Moffitt, 2008     www.debramoffitt.com

On my way back from the Wellness and Writing Connections Conference in Atlanta last Friday, I sat on the MARTA (the airport train) and enjoyed a moment of rest.  We had spent the day working on how writing and words can foster healing.  In my workshop we focused on creating sacred space through imagination and writing so that we can return there again and again in trying times.  The doors opened at the next stop and my quiet inner voice broke into my contentment and reverie and said, “move over.”  A seat emptied next to the window and another empty seat remained in front of me at a right angle.  With the accumulated weariness of the day which included rising at 4:15 a.m. to make a 6:00 a.m. flight, I was too slow.  A man equipped with a cell phone at his ear and his luggage in the other hand, lacked a third hand to grab the steel safety bar.  His wife settled in next to me and the train lurched forward before the man stumbled backward and clumsily crushed my foot with his thick leather heeled business shoe. 

I winced in pain.  He mumbled a curt, insincere “sorry” between words in his cell phone.  I struggled not to react by making him feel pain in return.  Animal instinct drives us to want to inflict a wound for a wound.  A quick kick to the shin or a sharp word about his lack of manners might have given an outlet to my pain, but it didn’t coincide with the work I’d been doing all day – or for the past few years.  “Do not harm in thought, word or deed,” was a potent lesson echoing back to me from a temple in India where a Western woman literally sat down on my lap and crushed me.  There I learned to let go of the ego desire to react by harming.  It seemed as if the temple gods stood present to watch my reactions.  I took it as a test, inhaled a deep breath and moved silently away.  The woman did not apologize.    

The lesson came back to me on the Atlanta train.  Rise above instinct.  Another passenger, a middle-aged man who had observed the scene, saw my pain and reacted with a smile.  When I looked back at him with shock, he turned away.  What is it about human nature that enjoys the suffering of others?  So sitting there with the man who crushed my foot inches away, I worked on my inner state of being.  I felt an urge to give him a nasty stare to let him know how much he had hurt me.  But my higher wiser self stopped this.  “It was an accident,” it reminded me.  I too have done this to other people at different times unintentionally.  My mind wanted to veer into nasty thoughts and a fit of cursing at him, but my better angel, that divine part of my Self, said “No.  Your thoughts will influence the environment.  Send love instead.”

Of course the lower mind said, “Is she crazy or what?  This is survival.”

“Yes, it is about survival,” my still silent inner voice answered.  I thought of humanity and how we must get out of our cycle of wars and revenge.  If we continue to inflict a wound for a wound, we will never create peace on earth.  Peace must begin with me, right now. 

I took a deep breath and lifted my thoughts to my sacred space – an Indian temple where I had felt the bliss of peace that knows no bounds.  My feelings of anger, hurt and revenge washed away.  I felt better; my foot felt fine now too.  No bruise marked my skin.  I wished good to the man, a fellow traveler on his way to the airport – and I let go of the pain and forgave him.  I didn’t carry the baggage of a grudge onto the flight.  My higher self, for this once, won over the instinctual animal nature.  This was my small contribution to creating a world at peace last week.  Now if I can only continue to repeat it again and again.   

copyright: Debra Moffitt, 2008     www.debramoffitt.com

Up at Jackson Hole last week on our (almost) one year wedding anniversary, the clear skies and arid climate cleared my mind.  Sleeping and waking where the rugged youthful mountains tower 14,000 feet into the pristine air miles away, bring clarity and brightness.  No space for wavering or worry here.  At dawn the Pleiades sparkled and Orion held fast in the velvety sky.  When the first light broke over the range to the East, the outline glowed blue.  On the first evening a moose and her baby nibbled at the Aspen leaves a few feet from the road we walked.  Their chocolaty fur and graceful, slow movements gave them an aura of contentment and beauty.  A boat ride away over Jenny Lake and up the trails into Cascade Canyon we found another moose lying in the tall grass.  Some unaware hikers stood twenty feet away.  How many animals remained so close, yet just beyond our perception?  The gurgling, steaming geysers of Yellowstone gave the impression of walking on the moon and signs warned that stepping off the board walk might mean melted boots.  If the acidic water could eat through stone and the earth’s curst, I guess rubber soles wouldn’t put up much resistance either.  Elk screeched their rutting cry and tons of bison stood heavily at the roadside grazing.  Being in the beauty and grandeur of this frontier landscape gave me greater respect for the Native Americans who shared this space with them.  Nature’s inspirations fill up the empty well. 

In the midst of the calm where a rhythm of nature prevails and fewer people gathered, my mind enjoyed the silence of the mountains.  There’s a lack of mental and physical noise that melts away the inner chatter and makes me receptive to simply listening to the inner calm.  I fall into harmony with the natural world.  Sometimes the best way to foster writing is to stop the inner flow of words and become hollow like a flute.  Walks in nature do it for me.  But what happens when I’m stuck on a plane or in a meeting and need a sense of sacred space?  Reverend Sally Johnston, who I interviewed this week for an article on Words of Power suggested a “non-thought filled prayer” as a way to quiet the mind.  We think of prayer as asking for things, but in this practice a single sacred word of your choice remains the focus.  The word like peace, thank you, love, Jesus or Abba, acts as an anchor to keep the mind fixed and rested on it.  Instead of saying “stop thinking, stop the rush of inner chatter,” during a meditation or a moment of anxiety, the sacred word acts as a focal point to soothe and ease the weary, frazzled mind.  At Buddhist retreats, teachers use the expression of “bringing the mind home.”  The repetition of a single sacred word does this well.  It’s a good practice that I use when I can’t get on a mountain or into a forest or field.        

Copyright: Debra Moffitt, 2008    www.debramoffitt.com

Intuitive, Penny Pierce writes, “Communication that comes from fear only creates more fear.  It’s a waste of breath.”  The media’s focus on disaster – whether natural, manmade or economic – sows more anxiety.  Papers, TV and Internet have been doing this for awhile now.  Perhaps it gets a bigger audience and more advertising.  Whatever the ulterior motives, the result is not constructive or helpful. 

One Chinese curse was, “may you live in interesting times.”  We’re in those times now and instead of facing them with fear and thinking of it as a curse, we can embrace them as an opportunity to learn and grow.  The pace of change is so rapid and our world has become so complex, we can only begin to understand and cope with it by perceiving at light speed.  This, Caroline Myss says, is the speed at which the soul functions.  It transcends reason and we know the answers before we may be able to reason them through.  In the case of Albert Einstein, he received his insight and understanding about the theory of relativity in a flash, but it took him ten years to explain it in words.

Fear clouds up the system and causes pain, anxiety and illness.  Fear can tell us when to fight or flee and be useful in protecting us from harm from predators (this is at the instinctual, animal level), but it can also cloud the mind, block communication and create reactions that harm ourselves and others.   

 The antidote to fear is love.  Writing with the energy of love can serve and help to promote understanding rather than create division and confusion.  Fear pollutes.  Promote a fear free environment where you work, live, write and play.  A good mantra to remember is "I am love."  Watch how the places and people change.     

Copyright: Debra Moffitt 2008