Clarity Practice Balance

Words are very important to me. For many obvious reasons, both artistic and personal, I have always had an interest in being able to find and use the right words in a given situation. The artistic importance of this is pretty self-evident. As for the personal, well, that comes from a life of needing to express myself through words. Ironically, that is easier said than done. It is mostly intuitive. I don't read words of the day or look through the thesaurus. I am blessed with a great memory that allows me to simply pick up great words here and there. And I try not to force their use.

My meditation practices are also fairly commonplace: concentrating on breathing, counting, humming a simple sustained note, or just being mindful of my own thoughts. Another thing I like to do is to choose a word, close my eyes, and focus deeply on what that one, particular word means to me.

Lately, I've been meditating on clarity. There is an analogy I read about somewhere that says the mind is like a glass of water with sediment in it. When your thoughts get all mixed up and start flying around, it's like sediment getting dusted up and clouding the water in the glass. In order to think more effectively, you need to slow down and relax and basically stop thinking. Then, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the water in the glass becomes clear.

So my meditation has been to try and maintain careful focus on clarity, and only clarity. I mean this literally. For weeks, I would concentrate on attempting to keep my mind clear. Each time I sensed random thought creeping in, I would repeat (not verbally) the word "clarity" to myself until any other thought passed away. Eventually, one thought began to come back continually. It was a conversation I'd had with my aunt about the idea of practice. That is, both practicing some particular event in your mind before actually carrying it out, as well as the act of putting things into practice. My view of it is that each time we put something into practice, it is our chance to do it the right way in that moment and also to use it as an opportunity to practice & prepare for future moments.

I knew, then, that the meaning of clarity had something to do with practice. I needed to figure out what that was. Now, most of my meditation sessions involve using more than one technique. The mind ties them all together. After the "clarity" technique, I would always listen to my thoughts without trying to control them. Finally, one day the words "clarity, practice, balance" came to me, in that order. Eureka!

Balance has always been important to me. I'm an optimist by nature, but as I've gotten older I've tried to pair that with realism. Balance is where I find that. I believe it is very difficult for us to keep a clear focus when we fall to extremes. Whether it's gluttony or starvation, moving hard to either side of the emotional spectrum can cloud our judgment. If the water in the glass is knocked off balance, the sediment at the bottom will dust up as the water finds its own level.

Since this insight, my mantra has been these three words: Clarity Practice Balance. It tells me that a clear mind is found by practicing balance at each opportunity.

Clarity. Practice. Balance.

Travel

Most people enjoy a good trip. In some way or another, travel holds appeal for almost everyone. Some people are all about the destination, so they just want to get wherever they're going. Others actually enjoy the journey and include it as a part of the experience. That debate is for another time. Both approaches are encompassed by the concept of travel.

People travel for many reasons, viz.: meditation, vacation, to settle or relocate, for political reasons, to visit others, or just for fun. Trips vary in length and scope, from sailing around the world right down to a day-trip in a car. When I think about my desire to travel, my thoughts always center on one important question.

Am I traveling to escape my world or to expand my world?

In my mind, it is a critical distinction. Any of the aforementioned reasons can be an expansion or an escape. I always think about spiritual retreats, which can either be very good for my daily life, or very bad. Remembering past retreats that I've taken, my most vivid memory is the silence, the peaceful silence. I can't help but refocus my mind almost the instant I step into an environment like that. I make observations about myself, and resolve to change some things while strengthening others.

A good meditation like that does not only learn lessons, but formulates a plan for applying those lessons to daily action. However, sometimes things don't work out as planned, and the retreat simply becomes an escape. I return to the noise of the everyday world and revert back to my everyday self. Sometimes the lessons learned actually make the negative things even worse. They become louder because I was only escaping them.

So it is with travel. It seems patently obvious, but I think sometimes we forget that we are, in fact, bringing ourselves along on the trip. There's no escaping that. I believe that there is an implicit assumption that if we go out into worlds undiscovered, so too will we discover new parts to ourselves, or maybe even a whole new self! Fortunately (in my view), there is no other self waiting for us on the other side of the world.

In fact, those parts of ourselves that we're wishing so dearly for are always there, no matter how deeply buried, regardless of what landmark or mountain range or body of water we're looking at in that moment. Personally, I would much rather find my true self at home and then take that self out to see the wonders of the world, for when I return, I can bring it all back with me. This is the beauty of using travel to expand my world.

When I go forth with all the baggage that makes me who I am -- with the realization that, while I am changed by every experience, no one experience will define me -- I also get to come back with all the new things I learned, memories made, and places made known. The fog of war lifts, and these experiences become a part of the world for me. This makes it easy to channel my lessons into application.

And that is the most important part of the travel. It is ridiculously easy for me to come upon new thoughts about life and say that I believe certain things or that I will do certain actions in a given situation. What is much harder, and much more important, is standing by those beliefs and having the fortitude to do those actions when the situation arises.

Nothing gets left behind.