Realizations

I think I'm beginning to really feel the benefits of Meditation now.  And to understand the simplicity/complexity of it all.

 

Seems so simple, this notion that pain may actually be just thoughts, but its an invisible sink-hole and one I've fallen into for many years.  Discovering just how much now.

We get sucked in by our thoughts/minds and the whole caboodle gets mangled up with feelings/emotions.  From this indigestible soup a hideous concoction of incomprehensible blabber feeds back to our minds and its this, that then directs our actions, decisions and our lives ... its no wonder we can't find a way out.

Our reactions become habitual and, over time, so deeply ingrained that its nothing short of a massive effort to sort it all out.

For me it took an illness or two, but I'm now actually beginning to feel grateful to both the cancer and the MS for this (grateful as well as frustrated, angry, frightened n all that stuff too - I ain't no hero!)  

But I am completely grateful to our fabulous NHS and Macmillan for funding my meditation training, and above all, grateful to the gifted and lovely counselor who's teaching me.

Its a life-changer

From this:

As well as this: 

To THIS:

For me its not the "being alone" that's the issue, (far from it, I really like being single) its the getting tangled up in those blinkin' thoughts and allowing them to dictate/control my feelings - as it is for many other people too, I have no doubt.

But just look at the expression on the face of this little boy - this is how I'm beginning to feel now when I successfully manage to take some distance from the flow of habitual thoughts and back into the Now.  

Its a slow process and, at present, I can only catch a few moments of this bliss, (among others of frustration of course), but with practice ...

~ ~ ~

The other thing is, I can see how this is going to affect my Art too...

I want to become that empty vessel, like the "Now" sculpture. 

     "...A condition of complete simplicity..." (T.S. Elliot)

And into that vessel ideas can settle and find expression.

"Now" by Kate Newlyn 1999 

"We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the 

emptiness inside that holds whatever we want"

Lao Tzu

~ ~ ~

The 3 sculptures on this page can be viewed on my website:

http://www.katenewlyn.com/

~ ~ ~

One of the most important ideas my meditation teacher's passed on to me is that the mind is actually one's friend... flies in the face of all I've written on today's post but it gives a whole new dimension and helps massively.

...more on this later, the sun's out and I want to sit out on the patio and have a coffee...