There is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened. This mic drop of a sentence forms a part of the closing reading in Al Anon. I'm sure I repeated it a hundred times without fully appreciating it.
Most of us want to solve our problems; get rid of them. But like every living thing in this world, our problems just want to be loved. So, the real task we have is sitting with them, listening and practicing acceptance before jumping to some kind of action. Like Thich Nhat Hanh says, our problems aren't something outside ourselves. The people we have challenges with live inside us. When we understand that, we become open to compassion, which is actually the solution.
I've been practicing meditation, literally trying different things out, for at least five years now. When the topic arises in conversation, a lot of people tell me it's something they are curious about, have tried unsuccessfully, or they know it would be good for them. That sounds like an annoying task to get done! I like to think of meditation like someone asking me, “Would you like a free, professional massage?” Yes, I would.
Lately I've been experimenting with meditations that focus on specific chakras. That is not something that I ever expected myself to say or do, but I've become increasingly willing to do anything that could better my situation or lessen my unhappiness. During the last year of teaching, my normal stress response of migraines expanded into stomach pain. In effort to attend to that, I started looking into what's going on when stress expresses that way and realized that there is a lot to the concept of the solar plexus chakra's connection to confidence, assertiveness, and decision making. It isn't news that I've got a lot of personal work to do in that area, but I get that it has become a “front burner” kind of challenge.
As a result, I tried a meditation that, had it been in the beginning of my experimentation, I would have never continued. But now, I'm game to try things that seem a little “far out” for a person who grew up with a Marine father from Amish country. Try the link if you feel adventurous, or some other kind of meditation that feels like a massage to you. Read this poem I wrote about it to get the vibe.
Yellow Ball of Light
They told me —-
There is a yellow ball of light inside your stomach,
just
below your heart
Breathe into it,
watch it expand
But it feels instead
like a little canary
bumping into wire bars
like a stone lodged firmly
in the granite cliff of
my life
I sing to my solar plexus
reaching back to the centuries circle
holding hands and chanting
my mouth round
my throat a portal
Just below my cage of ribs
a buzz
a hum
I am
that yellow canary
the curving cage and swing
that cliff
of sheer rock
soaking up the sun
flattened in relentless winds
I am
that wind, relentless
the waves of light
traveling great distance
just to smile
warmly on your
face