by Brad Aaron Modlin

A couple of days ago I spent a whole day next to the beautiful River Monnow not far from where I live, in the most blissful solitude. These days solitude is something I long for more of, so sitting there by the river I felt myself melting and drinking it all in. When I first set off on my mini retreat I noticed anxiety at play in my chest – Will everything go ok back home? Where am I going? What will I encounter? So, for the first half hour my mind, body and heart were still staccatoing tightly at a high frequency. I found my spot on a tangled mat of roots inches from the flowing water, underneath weeping boughs of alder, and sat. And sat. And sat. And time stood still. I could have remained there indefinitely. The river gurgled and rushed, the sun sparkled and ran dapples across it, a grey wagtail bobbed by and then a kingfisher. Before long I noticed the anxiety had evaporated and I sank into a deep melody of being, staccato tightness gone.

Later I sat underneath a grand oak on a little ledge above the river. Again, I entered a flow allowing my awareness to rest into just being, enveloped in the solace of nature, vitalised by a gentle awe – I just loved the river. At some point a cockerel crowed from a distant farm, its voice carried free into the summer air. There was something about the sound of the cockerel crowing and of really being there to let myself experience it. I realised that over the past bunch of years I had not let this sound into awareness, even if I had supposedly heard it. My mind has been too preoccupied with a thousand and one things. It was as if every cockerel crow I had ever heard was held in a dream within this present one. And the bittersweet thrumming present touched deep into my veins and ran through me to flood my heart. I long to always hear a cockerel crowing in this way, free of the crush of inner and outer ‘stuff.’

In this moving poem I wonder whether Brad Aaron Modlin, a contemporary poet who teaches at the University of Nebraska, Kearney (find out more here), is saying something a bit like what I am trying to convey about my day by the river. There is something about the timeless span of the poem and its precious life lessons, reaching from now to that fourth-grade day and back. And there was something similar in that crow of the cockerel – as if all existence – both the beginning and end of it, had no beginning or end when encapsulated in a moment. It is something about living life mindfully, with humility and with feeling. It is about letting yourself be called towards what has meaning and soul for you. It is about allowing life to teach you of itself – the hard lessons and the good. It is about risking the significance of the moment and following through towards this and letting it be the way you live. And maybe it is about not getting lost in academics, technology, and stuff. And yet it is about getting lost – because we all do, and so finally it is about finding ourselves and each other and the world within an encompassing embrace of presence.

Ps. It’s not long until our next Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry course begins on the 12th September. Sign up to enjoy the plethora of gifts that being with poetry mindfully has to offer towards living fully and with heart.

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

by Jeff Foster

Well here we have the paradox at the heart of mindfulness and meditation practice. Jeff Foster (a British meditation teacher and poet – find out more about him here), is speaking of the difference between as he puts it ‘I used to meditate’ and ‘I am meditation’. In the first line there is a certain doing, in the latter only being. So as beginners or even those with a good amount of experience behind us – how do we negotiate this paradox?

For a start, meditating is a bit like tuning the string of a lute – we don’t want it too tight (too much striving) or too loose (a lack of focus and clarity). Sometimes we’re tense and unable to let go of doing, sometimes we’re sleepy, dreamy or in a daze.

Many of us don’t know how not to try – is this so for you? This was certainly the case for me at first. I gradually learnt to see the striving and let it go. There is a delicate balance here of holding a clear intention for the practice, while at the same time releasing the habit to do the meditation or try to achieve the intention of the practice. On top of this if we go off duty completely we’ll just space out! So where is the happy medium?

We’re given lots of forms and structures to guide us in our practice – Settling, Grounding, Resting and Support (S.G.R.S.) being the core one taught by the Mindfulness Association, and we’re also encouraged to practice formally and regularly. It’s certainly been my experience that the more I practice ‘on the cushion’, the more benefit I experience naturally in daily life. But I also think it’s important not to sacrifice our journey towards finding what is essential, what is there when there’s nothing added. The forms and structures may be a means to journey in this direction, but they are not the destination. The metaphor which is sometimes used here is of a finger pointing at the moon. The moon is our basic aware nature, the finger is all the signposts we need to point ourselves in its direction and not get lost too much on the way. S.G.R.S. is not the destination, it is a skilful means to facilitate ourselves towards something which is beyond the word destination.

Jeff Foster seems to convey how it would be to already be ‘there’, where the finger is pointing to, to already have stabilised this as a way of being moment to moment. I think this poem can serve as inspiration to us about how this might feel and I’m sure we all have glimpses of the wonder of the ordinariness that he speaks of here and there, which can serve as inspiration from within too. I also think the poem can serve as a meditation instruction. Which line would you like to take away with you as a mantra for living mindfully in daily life?

Ps. Spend 6 weeks immersing yourself in how poetry can teach us universal wisdom and guide us in our meditation. We have the popular Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry course starting again in September. Find out more click here.

Photo by Melanie Magdalena on Unsplash

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls. 

by Charles Simic

I find this an intriguing poem by Serbian-American poet Charles Simic. Stones are so hard, physical and intractable. We think of them as unchanging, solid, constant and inanimate – and certainly not dynamic. Yet in this poem Simic plays with reimagining this absoluteness, finding a magical, light-bringing mystery in there instead. What might this be a metaphor for?

My son Sylvan is fascinated by stones because he knows they may contain treasure – fossils and crystals. He loves to crack them open to see what’s inside and is constantly on the look out for special ones. What surprise may there be inside? What possibility? I remember walking with bare-feet on the sun-warmed rocks on the northern beaches of the Holy Isle where I used to live, receiving a massage from them. There is something wonderful about stones to be appreciated over and over again!

But coming back to the question of what is the metaphor here, I’m reminded of moments when I feel intractably stuck, like my situation and accompanying feelings are solid as a weight, like a sack of stones. I can’t see the room for manoeuvre – it feels like ‘this is how it is and always will be’. But then with the help of mindfulness and compassion practice, I realise something. Although it may be subtle, it changes my seeing and feeling and I find ‘it is not dark inside after all’. Continuing to follow this lead I may discover messages, codes, clues, like the ‘strange writings and star charts on the inner walls’ of what had seemed like a rock of stubbornness, loss, anger, criticism, impossibility… The pearl of wisdom here is: Look inside these feelings, feel them, and find the hidden door in them.

What stone-like feelings might you look inside of?

Ps. If you like the beauty and metaphor in poetry and would like to find out how mindfulness can bring this alive in your own inner world come along to our Mindfulness and Mystical Poetry weekend in London in May.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

by Tony Hoagland

Who can find the time to sit out in the sun and listen? Can you? Can I? Do I remember often enough that ‘among my duties, pleasure is a thing, that also needs accomplishing’? Often I find myself with the sense of not enough time, with a to-do list that is longer than the hours I’d like to (or feel I have to!) accomplish it in. In fact, there are days when time feels like the biggest gift, the most precious luxury.

But is it really time I feel a lack of – or is it attention? The sunlight is there whether I remember or not, but it’s the remembering that makes the difference. For I also know the experience of a full busy day which is somehow spaciously full, where I remember to look up and out, and in – connected to the bigger picture even while also being present with this spreadsheet, that pile of laundry.

So maybe, inspired by this poem, I’ll take a leaf out of the poet Tony Hoagland’s book, and write the remembering into my list!

Photo by Kylie Paz on Unsplash

PS If you’re feeling a bit (or even a lot) overwhelmed and stressed out, there’s a weekend in December on Mindfulness and Stress which explores basic mindfulness tools to deal with that stress differently…