Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.
by Martha Postlethwaite
My deepest intentions with my meditation practice are to create inner freedom from my suffering and touch on peace so I can bring more of that outward to family and loved ones. I dove into the deep end with a meditation practice in 2015 and began going on long silent retreats and although it’s not something I’d recommend to anyone as a starting point, it’s where I am today. I lost my sister the year before my first retreat to an opioid overdose and she was a heart transplant recipient. Her heart failed after giving birth to her daughter and she had five years with her before passing. I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had with meditation but want to learn how to more skillfully and compassionately work with my inner landscape. I came to this path through an incredible amount of suffering, trauma and a wrong understanding that the harder I worked the more I’d rid myself of these traumas and the more pain I was able to sit with and endure the more free I’d be. It’s been a lot to take on.
Several years ago, I began working as a laborer for a state park. That job taught me a lot about nature and the cultivation of wildflowers and wise caretaking of forests and meadows. One of my assignments was to clear invasive honeysuckle from tree lines within and around the park. Hours of intense manual labor were spent by myself and work release prisoners to free giant sycamores, cottonwoods and shagbarks from the gnarled snares of invasive honeysuckle. It was back-breaking work. Lots of patrons looked at us like we were fools. My boss had been doing this work for many years and it took a toll on his body. I fell in love with the work too and even had ideas that I was playing a small part in preserving what would hundreds years hence become an old growth forest. It was pretty grandiose thinking but for several years, making that clearing in the woods filled my days with purpose and outwardly represented the intentions of my inner work.
I’ve practiced meditation now for 8 years and realistically it’s not been at all like what I’d envisioned or thought. Many wonderful things have bloomed despite the distress of bringing many things to the surface. In 2020, my wife and I got married at that park under a 150 year old eastern cottonwood with a handful of close friends and family. I’d made a clearing around that old tree a few seasons earlier and removed the snares of bad overgrowth around it. The surrounding areas we turned into a wildflower meadow by cutting out the overgrowth and allowing light to reach the ground in areas that had been shaded for a hundred years. Many place that I’d gotten stuck with the tractor or backhoe in those fields broke the ground just enough to allow species of wildflower seeds to take root from above and below. It didn’t mean getting stuck wasn’t a huge frustration but time and perspective gave it meaning as communities of flowers thrived in those ruts. Amazingly, most species of wildflowers germinate very close to the surface often in less than a quarter inch of very poor and compacted soil. The tree lines we had cleared now bloom with amazing flowers like fire pink, spiderwort, cup flower, butterfly milkweed, snakeroot, sneezeweed and blue false indigo that change beautifully throughout the seasons. The seeds had always been there, just waiting on the right conditions and on the sunlight and space to be opened up.
8 years of meditation practice and I’m a very, very imperfect person who still gets stuck a lot but I’ve had glimpses of what is possible. I’d like to bring more compassion to my practice and start over gently. That job was so much of my identity for years and in some way meditation and my thoughts about meditation have been too. It’s not all been for nothing and I’m very grateful to be a part of this course and to start over again, more gently, skillfully and compassionately for myself and all others.
Today, I sit with my 6 month old son and meditate while he naps. He’s the purest love I’ve ever known. I feel the love he shows me when he smiles and that gives me a glimpse into the love I want to feel for myself. Intuitively I feel like it’s been there all along , waiting on me to make the clearing.
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