Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient by Will Johnson

Author:Will Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

Dancing on the Earth

Ordinarily, we conceive of the body as a solid object and experience the mind as an ongoing flow of thoughts and stories. When we bring the posture of meditation into our lives, however, our awareness of body and mind changes dramatically. Body now becomes an ongoing flow of sensations not unlike a mass of individual droplets of water in a swiftly moving stream, while the involuntary activity of the mind gradually slows down until it evaporates, revealing in its place its mirrorlike nature: steady, calm, and aware. When the body is still, the mind becomes overly active. As we learn to bring resilient movement into the actions and motions of our body, our mind becomes quiet and still and our deeper nature is revealed.

The movements of the body that allow for this naturally quiescent and mirrorlike condition of the mind are never contrived or forced. They are always spontaneous and organic. They are not predetermined movements that the mind initiates and controls. They are movements that the body makes on its own with no preconception, rehearsal, or forethought. Envision for a moment a tidal pool or coastal estuary in which long individual strands of sea kelp have come together in a thick and densely packed tangle. The lapping movement of the water washes against the strands of kelp, and the kelp responds. It moves this way and then back. It bumps up against its neighbors and then accommodates its shape to its new situation. The round ball at the head of the kelp strand bobs and weaves, and the movement is resiliency passed along the length of its body. Sometimes the tail of the kelp is tossed up on a wave, and the movement that has been initiated is transferred back up the length of its body until even the round ball of its head nods and bobs in response.

When you practice mindfulness, you come to realize that you are so much more than you may originally have thought yourself to be. You gradually open to an awareness of what has been referred to in the perennial philosophical traditions as the great ground of being, this substratum or sea of experience in which all the individual events and objects of the world float and move. The ground of being is not some sort of philosophical platitude. It is as concrete and real as your body itself. Keep the body still, your awareness of sensations contained, and your mind active, however, and the ground of being stays as hidden from view as the elusive Himalayan snow leopard. Relax into yourself through mindfully applying the principles of the posture of meditation, and it bounds into view like the friendliest family cat. In fact, it reveals itself as having been present all the time. You were just looking in the wrong direction. In the early part of this century, a Western mystic who took the name Wei Wu Wei resurrected an archaic term to describe this exact situation. The word is obnubilate, defined as “to miss the obvious by looking in the wrong direction.

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