Right now, some of you are thinking, oh I know the feeling of
being unsatisfied, and it is surely one I don’t want to contemplate any
further. It’s true some of us struggle
with recognizing the changes taking place for us. The fact is change is always happening –
sometimes these changes are wanted and sometimes they aren’t, but it
nonetheless occurs.
Change comes in all shapes and sizes. It is the miniscule, nondescript and ‘ordinary’
ones that we most easily overlook. For e.g. our feelings
change many times in a day and we often don’t realise it. A
perfect example is when we feel thirst.
We can drink water and that feeling of thirst is quenched. Even if you can’t, for whatever reason, drink
your fill of water, you are still able to feel a slight lessening of the
discomfort of thirst when you sip some water.
The same goes for hunger, tiredness, or restlessness. Imagine how dreadful it would be to never experience
change or respite from these feelings?
And yet, in reality we do.
We do experience change. And that
is the miracle. An ordinary, everyday
mundane miracle.
This past weekend I was helping coordinate a retreat. The days were long and even though I had
eaten several meals I was hungry much of the time. As uncomfortable as the pain of that hunger
was, there was also the awareness that I would be eating soon, and that that
pain would and could go away. Truly
remarkable was realizing that not only would the hunger pain dissipate, but
that the taste of the food itself would bring some pleasure with it. I was stunned when this insight hit me. Eating
could be just a perfunctory function of sustaining the body, but it’s
more than that – we are able to enjoy the food as it lessens hunger. This daily oft repeated activity in many our lives is capable of awakening appreciation in us. Do we see that?
When we think about it, how is it that water is able to quench thirst
and food stunt hunger, and simultaneously produce feelings of enjoyment and relief?
To see these little miracles, we need to be paying attention to our bodies, thoughts and the happenings in our lives. Miracles are happening all the time, and if we are absent or dismiss them as ‘ordinary’
we miss out.
Perhaps this may better illustrate my point. Apparently kittens are born blind. When they open their eyes, after a few days,
the pathway for sight is instantly created.
If the kittens are blindfolded at birth, they are blinded for life even
after the blindfolds are removed because the neural connections for sight
weren’t established. So even though
there’s a world with sights, colours and textures, these kittens are never able
to see it simply because their nervous systems weren’t “prepared or trained” to
see it.
Like the kittens, we may overlook the miraculous in our
lives because we haven’t created the pathways and neural connections to help us
see the miracle in the ordinary. Unlike
the kittens, however; we can change our situation. This is where mindfulness comes in.
Mindfulness trains us to be present and to notice. And every time we do so, the brain and
nervous system make new connections to help us see clearly. In paying exquisite attention to the
seemingly ordinary, overlooked and mundane, we begin to open our eyes to the
wonders within us and around us. Then in
the midst of the turmoil and upheaval of our lives and the world, we begin to
see the amazing creatures we are, the wonder of life, and the beauty of our
world.May you learn to see the miracles in your life.
