Try this: immerse yourself in a joyful experience. I used to find it difficult to settle my mind and body in order to truly center myself and meditate. I believed meditation was a good practice for personal well-being; so, I tried to manage my “self” and make it happen. It often didn’t work so well! One day a friend suggested that I was trying too hard – and offered me a simple pathway to mental and spiritual calm. Seek joy within – go to a joyful time and place in your memory and savor that place – immerse yourself. Dwell there for a while.
Let me share the place I found – not that I can give you “my place” – but, perhaps, I can express some ideas that may help you find your own.
I often take my mind to a place called Dunroven – the name actually means “Done roving” – somewhere you want to stay because it gathers you in its leafy arms and fills you with its magic. It is the name that a group of New York City children, their teacher, and their teenage counselors gave to an idyllic place in the Catskill Mountains where we spent our summers – so very long ago. Being a child who dwelt in a concrete environment – New York City – surrounded by tall buildings, pavement sidewalks, tar-covered streets with fast moving traffic and rarely a tree or a blade of grass in sight, I fell in love with Dunroven the first time I saw it.
I begin my meditation with that first sight of the slowly descending fields and pine forest. I see it laid before me as I climb over the log fence that marks the beginning of my mental journey. I sit at the top of the hillside for a few moments, smiling to myself, “I’m here, again.” I feel the peace that surrounds me immediately… I hear the voices of children calling out to each other, laughing, squealing – I hear the wind rustling through the trees: friends I’ve come to know as Birch, Oak, Maple and Pine. I see the leaves, each unique, yet each, so alike.
As I look to my right, I see the cabins where we sleep in bunk beds, our trunks with our belongings stored beneath – where we wash ourselves with cold water in small basins. The cabins, without lights, with nowhere to plug in anything that uses electricity. The cabins, with their oil lamps for when darkness descends – they have their own names: Castle Pine, Merrilass, Mansion, Shantelyu and Waywayonda, where girls live – and Pokomoonshine, Susquehana, Sequoia, Cherokee, Apache, where boys live.
There’s the Big House where our meals are prepared and eaten, where we attend plays, parties and dances. As I wander slowly down the hillside, meandering, seeing children and counselors enjoying jump rope, basketball, playing guitars, making mud pies, rolling in the grass, I hear the echos of their joyful sounds.
I smile as I smell the LaLas – little wooden outhouses for toilets that don’t flush – water closets for water that doesn’t run.
I pass the row of trees at the edge of a larger field that eventually slopes toward the Pine forest.
Counselors and older girls sit under the shade trees combing the little girls’ hair in the late afternoon. I walk on, remembering the many kinds of hair that I have braided in so many styles under these trees.
I see a softball game there on one side of the field, a fire pit for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, and, on the other, stretches of tall grass spotted with beautiful splashes of Queen Ann’s Lace – tall stems topped with a spread of minuscule white flowers open to the sun and looking very much like huge lace doilies blowing in the breeze.
I enter the Pine forest, so thick that sky and sunlight are only visible in small patches… the temperature changes immediately – the smell of pine, flowers and tree bark surround me. The ground is soft, covered by many layers of brown pine needles. I lay down on them, ignoring the bugs I hear all around me. I listen for the birds – though I can’t say which birds sing which songs, they are all familiar and comforting to me.
I hear the sounds of voices on a narrow pathway nearby – the path we use to cross the cornfield on the other side of the forest and move along straight down to the kill – a small, slow moving bend in the river where we campers learn to swim. I don’t take the pathway to the river; instead, as I wander out of the forest, I walk among the corn stalks, remembering playing among them when they had grown tall enough to hide us from our counselors. The golden cornfield where the sun is warm and welcoming.
I see a flat granite rock, just perfect for sitting beside the kill – from there I watch a daddy-long-leg slowly wobble up a tree trunk and a bright green preying-mantis stand immobile, trying hard not to be seen among the leaves. Dusk begins to fall and fireflies appear – then, the crickets begin their evening concert. I end my meditation sitting by the kill, listening to cricket songs and the sound of the river rushing over fallen tree limbs and rocks in its pathway down the mountainside. I am at peace.
The key to this form of meditation is seeing with an inner eye, tasting, smelling, hearing and feeling the essence of that time and place that brought you joy – immerse yourself in it!