I had this idea and imagining it and
building it brought me alive. I was never
as engaged as when it was half-built. I’d read
the blueprint in my heart and carve another
piece. Once finished, I lived in it. It was where
I’d go to look out on the world. For years it was
a peaceful place in which I grew. I thought it was
my nest. But slowly, I grew so big that I couldn’t
get out of my idea. It became a cage. I panicked
and railed at what I’d made, afraid to give up
any of my growth. Trapped and exhausted, I
sat in the middle of all I’d built and began to
listen to the rhythm of things that never die.
In time, I grew smaller and smaller till I was
thin as the breath of life. Only then could
I slip through the bars of my idea. Like a
quiet breeze, I returned to the world.
by Mark Nepo
In Mark Nepo‘s book The Endless Practice, we are told how poem was written after a ‘disturbing and liberating’ dream. He elucidates the meaning of the poem by speaking about how, as he’s grown older, he has found himself gradually giving up on the notion of getting anywhere and building anything, so that he can arrive back into what is essential.
‘Until, like the breeze in my dream, I can slip through the bars of my own idea of life and join the actual pulse of life.’
When I look back on my own life, I can see myself passing through veils of self/life concept. I can see that I was living in a series of different realities created by my psychology at the time. I wonder about my veils now. Are they growing thinner? I think so.
With mindfulness, I think we can pierce through the veils to catch the shimmer of the actuality of the present, free of overlays. This is the reward of mindfulness – being in touch with the real, with the true pulse of life. Of course, we might not always come upon peace or delight there in the shimmer. Sometimes it might be the shimmer of loss or struggle that we meet. Mark Nepo tells how through nearly dying of cancer he learned that the only refuge is the moment:
‘To my humble surprise, each moment was a threshold to the sanctity that waits inside any circumstance.’
How about taking this as a daily life mindfulness practice: Ask yourself what construction of reality am I looking through here? Can I grow light and thin enough, humble or open enough, to float out between its bars and return to the actuality of the world as it is, now?
For example, I can see that I often live in a reality of progress, which to me in this life stage is mostly focussed on developing my work. In moments when my head gets tight and I’m feeling fixated on my To Do List, I find can just drop it all and look out of the window. Then feel my heart and breath and connect with the pulse of life within and around me. In a way, that is all there is.
PS If you’d like to explore the freedom from limiting concepts and constructs, we offer an indepth four stage training pathway that moves from mindfulness to compassion to insight and wisdom…
Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash
