Why Meditate? To Go to the Well

I wake up with a circus in my head. Forgot to call the sound guy yesterday (theatre), have to start practicing with the snake (theatre), lots to do today including a conversation I’d rather not have (theatre), worried about one kid (parenting/love), concerned about my lovely man (partnership/love), all with a mild caffeine-withdrawal headache.

This is not the best of me.

So I go to the well.

Which means I get a coffee and sit on the living room floor to breathe.

From the start, it feels as though the job is to become aware of my breath and what it’s doing in my body until my head shuts up. That is what happens. That’s half the story.

The other half is the magic part. Not to get all Hogwartsy, but I don’t know what else to call it.

After breathing for a bit, I feel as though I’m sinking into another place. It is just like looking at those weird pictures they used to hang in dentists’ offices, the ones that look abstract squiggles until you let your focus go wonky, at which point you see a lake, and mountains, and deer.

When my head gets quiet enough, my perception changes. I go to the well.

What’s it like? Quiet, open, huge (vast, VAST, I don’t know a big enough word), with a feeling of peace and connectedness.  Love is there, but not the personal i-love-you kind of love. It’s a huge love. It resolves a kind of ambient homesickness I carry with me everywhere else.

I suspect the well is always there, always waiting for my arrival, and that the well is where I really come from. Certainly the best creativity comes from there. And the best answers to all my concerns, except that by the time I get there, I don’t have any concerns. I’m aware that my worries about lighting, sound, snakes, kids, and lovely man have nothing to do with who I really am. (When I re-emerge from that place, I have excellent answers to the questions I no longer am so worried about.)

Meditation, then, is just me walking toward the well every day. Clearing a path.

Why tell you this?

Because you might have your own version of finding your way to the well, in which case I’d love to hear about it. Because I suspect meditation is a great tool (at the very, very least) for becoming sane and staying sane in a nutty world.

Mostly, i guess, because of the desire to point to beautiful things.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin