Patience is everything ...

"Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!" - Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

A fleeting moment of "zen" ...

I had a moment of zen recently. Maybe it wasn't zen. I'm not sure how I would characterize it, if I would characterize it. So I'll describe it:

I was taking class, sadly for the first time in a while. After hanging upside down for a while, and lying on the floor for a while, both with my eyes closed, we came together to begin. As I was trying to focus on what the teacher was saying, I couldn't help noticing everything. Sounds inside the room, outside the room, colors, the feeling of my skin against my shirt, how high the ceilings were, the difference in temperature between the bottom of my feet on the floor and the top of my feet in the air, peripheral vision, images in front of me, space behind me ...

It actually was scary. I thought I could go crazy. It was so much information, so much sensory input! And I felt completely unmoored. In this moment of everything, I felt the value of singular focus. And as I groped for a landmark in my experience to hold onto, to ground myself, I realized something else: my "normal" point of reference, the anchoring point of my experience, is my subjectivity. And when I became no more important than anything else - when my feet were no more important than the difference in temperature between top and bottom - I felt completely lost.

The thing is, after a moment it felt INCREDIBLE! But as soon as I began to luxuriate in the experience, to enjoy losing myself in time and space, I lost it. It's been a week. I can't seem to get it back. I haven't actually tried traditional meditation. I'm not sure why I hesitate to, but I will say that I've tried to meditate in the past and it's never gone particularly well. It did surprise me that my moment was in a large group. But it was still a private moment.

I feel like I'm trying too hard to get that feeling back. And I'm not sure what strategies to use. It affected my whole day in a positive way. A week later, and it's still the most exciting and important experience I've had since.