The practice of meditation resembles an autumn day. Rather than focusing on particular thoughts and emotions - our usual habit - we allow the mind instead to settle into its natural state: vast and spacious, like an alpine sky. This is not a "spaced-out" sort of vastness, however. For within this wide-open awareness, our attention is paradoxically able to become crisp and clear, like a Fall morning. Then, as our thoughts and emotions arise one by one within that spaciousness, they manifest themselves as vivid and shimmering, like aspen leaves dancing in the wind. Identifying with the sky of awareness instead of with the particular content of our thoughts and feelings, we practice amazement at the fact that they could arise at all! Like hiking a mountain trail and coming around a corner to find a grove of aspen radiating in golden glory, we feel the awe and wonder of our life here on earth!
Photo: Aspen trees and Flattop Mountain, Flattops Wilderness, CO; September 29, 2013
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