Have you ever noticed how our parenting experiences can be the perfect teachers of the lessons of mindfulness meditation, even when it appears in day to day life that our parenting responsibilities often trump our meditation practice routine? I re-learned this teaching this very morning. And it brought me back to how all this mindfulness meditation stuff got started for me, over 10 years ago.
I first picked up Jon Kabat Zinn's now famous book "Wherever you go there you are" when I was introduced to mindfulness in 2004. At that time I was in my second year of training as a clinical social worker, and cofacilitating a group therapy with my supervisor. In the group my supervisor was teaching mindfulness skills to our patients as a therapeutic tool.
I distinctly remember the green and brown look of the cover when my supervisor pulled it out one day to read a passage called "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." After that group I immediately went out and bought my own copy of the book and I began reading.
As I write this years later, I find it somewhat amusing that the way I dove in to mindfulness was by treating it as an intellectual exercise-reading, researching-rather than a practice. But at the same time, not so surprised either. Intelectualizing through reading and writing, even as I do in this very blog, is my default-comfort-zone-way of trying to incorporate in new information. And the paradox is, it has been through mindfulness that I learned that about myself in a deeper way. I became more aware of how difficult it is for me to not convert my experience into words or meaning or conclusions or projections. To let something just be is still extremely challenging for me. And so I practice.
But I have found now, over the last 3 years, even a whole other level of difficulty to this whole mindfulness meditation thing, and that is being disciplined and consistent. Amidst the goings on of being a working mom of two little ones, keeping a block of uninterrupted mindfulness meditation practice time is quite a challenge.
Take this morning for example. I am sitting in my morning meditation spot which is in the living room on a folded blanket on the rug next to the couch. I'm upright. My legs are crossed. My candle is lit inviting the divine spirit into my time of quiet. It is now 4:35 a.m.
Then, what do I hear? My husband calling, "Claire, can you come here?"
I get up and walk to the bedroom. I get to the doorway. My husband says, "can you get a paper towel, we have a nose bleed." My 5 year old son woke himself up because of a nose bleed, which he often gets, and had him pretty upset.
So we get him fixed up. The bleeding stops. He's not upset anymore but cannot fall back to sleep. "Despicable Me II" goes in the DVD player. Pillowcases and sheets get washed because of the blood spillage. And now it's 5:15 a.m. and who is now up too? My nine month old. And my husband has left the bedroom to hop in the shower before work, and the baby is ready to nurse.
Sayonara meditation practice.
But wait. What about what I read in Jon Kabat-Zinn's book all those years ago? Where he reminds us about his own parenting experience in "Wherever you go there you are." He said: "...when [he] had babies in the house, even the morning time was up for grabs. You couldn't be too attached to anything because everything you set out to do, even if you arranged it very carefully, was always getting interrupted or completely thwarted...They [the babies] seemed to sense when I was up and would wake up too."
For me, the lesson here is two-fold. One, I will have a very consistent flow of opportunities to practice the spiritual practice of non-attachment. And this is perfect because I am, of course, a cling-er. But second, and probably more important here, is EVEN one of the gurus of western mindfulness is saying it can be hard to maintain a regular meditation practice. So I say to myself, try to have some humor with it all and lighten up a bit.
What is ironic too, in a funny kind of way, is that though I was first introduced to mindfulness in 2004 when I was not married, had no kids, no dog, no house, I did not start practicing meditation until 2011- AFTER I had my son. And despite its obstacles, if I were to be honest, I'd say it was the life changing and values-changing process of having my son that pushed me through all those internal and external self-made and environmental barriers to actually establish a (semi) disciplined meditation practice in the first place. How's that for a paradox? Because after having a child I now wanted more than ever before to use mindfulness tools to help myself be more at home in my own skin. And I wanted desperately to model that self acceptance and possibility of equanimity for my own son.
And so I do sit down each day before dawn to practice, AND I willingly and flexibly shift to nose bleed situations as they are called for. If that is not a practice in acceptance and equanimity, what is?
Funny, isn't it, how most things we do seem to make there way full circle? Even at 4:30 in the morning.
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