Sometimes, writing, you grab ahold of a train of thought, swing up onto an open boxcar and ride the rhythm of its rails, catch its song, step into its words, each one filling in the story of where this particular train might be headed. It doesn’t matter if you get there, what matters is the going. Movement. Stasis is muzzle.
Meditation, by contrast, calls you to jump off that train. Sit quietly among the weeds of your mind. Notice the tiny cuts their edges leave on your legs, the mosquito collecting blood for her babies. Your blood. Your itchy neck the next few days. Breathe.
Notice the sensation in that right nostril. You did not just inhale a gnat. Grasp the feeling in the fingers of your mind—its texture, its weight.
Return to breath, allow the passing train, with its mile of tank cars, hopper cars, plywood cars, coal cars, boxcars, refrigerator cars, compressed gas cars—all of them decorated with spray paint, their colors and designs a welcome change from rust red, coal black, milk white though you can’t read any of it—to pass, leaving stillness and silence in its wake.
As if all creation pauses a moment to catch its harrowed breath. You pause. You breathe.
Your ears tune their volume knob down, down, down to where a grasshopper landing on a grass shoot heavy with seed is audible—the sound of the grass bending, six feet finding purchase, the thin stem brushing against blades as it bounces in response, less each time, until it, too, is still. Breathe.
The trains run, one after the other in ceaseless sequence. Each time you grab a pen and hop on, you ride closer to the engines—for there are four or six or three, depending on how many cars behind and the size of the climb ahead.
You wonder, when you make it all the way to the first locomotive, what that face will look like when it turns and sees you.
I can't tell you how much this helped me. My friend said said I was really good at prayer and it was time for me to start meditating. I don't know why I am doing it, but I am learning that it is the healthiest ten minutes of my day. The only way for me to know the benefits of meditation is to actually try it. Now, thanks to your insight I now understand why I am meditating. Meditating is a life game changer!