I don't know about you, but no matter how ratty my meditation moments are, I always feel kind of clearer afterwards. Even if it seems like just a parade of fragments of worry, irritation or some unfinished, random bit of business passing through. We can have idealistic ideas of peace, calm, a heart full of boundless love. 

But I value the simple arising of being just a bit clearer – as I go through my day of being a friend, a partner, a parent, a colleague. Less likely to do harm, more able to enjoy things.  A little more able to love the world.

A metaphor for the early stages of meditation training is a glass jar filled with soil and water. You shake it. What do you get? Muddy water. Then if you still the jar and let it sit, what happens? Bit by bit, the silt settles and what is revealed is clear, pristine water. So initially, we are just stopping, settling down and pausing long enough for the flurry of activity to subside. It is a relief.

Here is a poem by the brilliant Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, capturing so beautifully this process of emerging clarity.

The Clearing
 
Already the river is lighter in color, 
less brown, less turbid, more 
translucent. Just yesterday 
the currents were thick with mud 
and logs, needles and sticks 
and bits of once-living debris. 
Now that the furious flood has lost 
its force, the gravel and sand 
have begun their settling.
Whatever was floating now rests
on the banks and all that is left 
suspended in the water 
is what is most fine. 
Soon, even that will sink 
and the water will be clear again. 
I, too, have felt the gift of slowing, 
how it invites a sedimentation 
of all I try to carry—the silt of my stories, 
the muck of the world. 
Like a river, the more calm I am, 
the more clear I can become. 
No magic, just a matter of physics. 
How natural it is, the clearing.  

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

(Find out more about her work here: https://www.wordwoman.com/)

—Timothea Goddard