180th Week:  Embracing Nourishing Moments

As I mentioned in last week’s experiment, Central Park has recently been ablaze in saffron orange, with the 7500 Gates installed on walkways throughout the park by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  Having the opportunity to walk under The Gates every morning on my way to the office, I discovered that each day was a unique experience.

One morning, for example, the wind blew strongly and the posts of The Gates creaked, as the banners flapped in the wind.  Suddenly, I was transported to California, experiencing myself on a sailboat in Los Angeles Harbor, the mast creaking and the sales flapping in the warm wind.  It was a moment of pure delight and surprise – something that came totally unexpectedly and was thoroughly enjoyable.  In that moment, I recognized that I could imagine The Gates as anything I wanted them to be.  This realization opened up a daily adventure of discovering what The Gates would reveal and bring into my imagination along the way.

My favorite morning was when I recalled the Buddhist monks who offered a walking meditation under The Gates, symbolizing movement through transition, I believe. While I wasn’t able to attend the walking meditation itself, the fact that it happened entranced me, as I imagined the Buddhist monks bringing their quiet focus to the experience of moving under The Gates.  On this particular morning, the wind was again blowing hard, generating a great deal of flapping of fabric.  I imagined that I was walking under prayer flags, as they have in the Himalayas.  The fabric on the Gates didn’t look anything like true prayer flags, but the sound of their flapping in the wind was similar to me in that moment.

That morning’s walk, under The Gates as prayer flags, became sacred time and nourished me deeply.  The Gates themselves hadn’t changed, but I related to them in a way that opened up another dimension of experience.  The meaning I gave them created a unique and lovely walking meditation for me in that moment.

These experiences got me to thinking about how many opportunities we have in any given day to find meaning, delight, and nourishment in even the most mundane or familiar activity.  By coming to these activities with a “new mind”, as if we’ve never encountered them before, we can find new meaning and discovery in familiar places.  If we come to these moments without preconceived expectations, we open ourselves to deeper layers and levels of meaning and delight that we may never have imagined before.  It’s a way of letting the environment “speak to you” with a voice you may not usually have time to hear.

For example, as I look at a meditation flame in this moment, I invite it to communicate something to me I may not have noticed.  I find myself noticing the oil lamp and the beautiful leaf inside and I wonder about the person who designed it and then the people who made it.  I recognize that the oil in the lamp comes from someone’s efforts and, in this moment, I’m aware of the complexity and interdependence that allows my life to unfold as it does.  I could go on and make this moment an entire meditation, but this is just one example of how you can take anything in your environment and allow it to open up an experience of meaning, deepening, or just plain fun.  Had I chosen to focus on my electric toothbrush, I could have arrived at the same awareness of interdependence and complexity, or I might have had an awareness of the silliness and playful quality of the little brush spinning wildly in my mouth.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to allow yourself to play with the world around you, to let your imagination engage everyday experience with a sense of open curiosity.  As always, there’s no right way to do this and no particular outcome you need to have.  It’s one more opportunity to play with awareness, with truly inhabiting the present moment and noticing what you experience.