04 Nov Slowing Down to Feel the Power of Communion – More Wisdom from Eknath Easwaran
When last we communicated, one-pointedness was our focus. But it takes time to develop the skill of one-pointed attention. There’s no short cut; you’ve got to slow down.
I’m reading Slowing Down by Eknath Easwaran to learn how to do just that. I’m older now. I’m wiser. It’s time for me to move from going fast and getting it done to trusting the slow path of conscious attention, to absorb life through every pore of my body and thus to give what and who is in front of me my one-pointed attention.
I’ve conjured up an analogy, a story I can step into to slow me down:
I see the children on my block playing in the street, laughing and screaming with joy as they do, and then a car drives toward them. The children are wee ones, below the sight line. I jump out, arms stretched out in front of me, yelling to get the driver’s attention as well as the wee ones’. “S-L-O-W down,” I yell.
Slowing to notice all the small and beautiful things seeds me. I’m slowing down to experience the dream in my body, to listen to the dream language of my soul and to savor each stroke on my keyboard right now as I write to you. I can feel you. You feel good. My dream is love.
Communion rewired the chase
I felt like I’d been chasing my dream instead of being the dream. The chase can lead to desperation and thinking I need to buy everyone’s system to tell me how to get my work out there. And truth be told, I have done some of that “desperately purchasing their system because I don’t know something” behavior.
Until recently.
In July I had a few days to slow it all down at the Sun Dance ceremony, where time doesn’t exist and communion does. On a small, loving reservation in Gallup we sat under heavy tarps to keep the sun from withering us. My friends and fellow dancers took a snail’s pace to life.
Coffee mugs in hand, the children sitting with us, we talked, cooked, played with the children and had profound conversations. We each took turns speaking about our work in the world.
I could hear that talking was our way of searching for what we are really doing. We looked to each other for guidance. We were held by each other.
Love is slow (Lust is fast and furious)
I was only on the reservation for a few days but the conversations have stayed with me for months. We took our time. We were slow and deliberate. We had no agenda. We were simply allowing communion to hold us. As it did, we became a synergistic experience of ourselves. The conversation became bigger than the individuals.
Love was palpable. Love wrapped us in safety so we could continue to spill our soul’s desire on the dirt floor of this reservation. Once spilled out we could see what was there. We could amend the verbs, adjectives and concerns. We could spot things for each other that we had not seen for ourselves.
There was time to do nothing else but be in conversation with each other, to hear the stories since our last gathering, laugh and play games. There is something about this land that calls forth confessions of mind and conflicts of souls.
When we all return home to our lives it is never business as usual. We return with grumblings of transformation. We have left our conflicts of who we are and what we are to do in the dirt of this holy land. There, what wasn’t useful will be repurposed into the land. What we take with us is a new story that becomes our life. Our stories become us.
Slowing for communion
Jorge swirls his iced coffee, looking at it with trepidation. “What, is the coffee not good?” I ask. “No, I was just thinking,” he says as he continues to stare downward. “Well, think out loud.”
Without hesitation he lets it spill. “I’ve gotta make a presentation to a group of high school teachers about how to reach our children. They’ve had long careers and they just aren’t engaged the way the kids need them to be, the way I know they want to be and I don’t know how to say what I want to say.”
“I could talk to them about the students’ needs, about their values and impact, but…”
Silence slowed us down to give him the space he needed.
“But, what I really want to say is to love them. Love the children. They have to love the children.”
There you have it. His knowing. He is a man within a school system who wants teachers to love the children. He wants them to remember why they began teaching. They have to love the children to reach them.
“Yep, my friend, they do and you cannot negotiate the language of love into words like leadership or values. Love isn’t vague nor should be what you say to them.”
So I ask you, what have you left out or what wisdom have you missed in the rush of your life?
This is the power of communion.
“Slowing Down is an important spiritual discipline. Living faster and faster gives no time for inner reflection or sensitivity to others, making our lives tense, insecure, inefficient, and superficial. Slowing down helps achieve freedom of action, good relations with others, health and vitality, calmness of mind, and the ability to grow.” -Eknath Easwaran
Can you slow yourself down enough to hear the wisdom, for a holy communion with others, and for love’s slow cooked meal for you?
Of course you can. It can be a bit scary to slow down – to really be in concert with all your senses, to hear your thoughts, to feel whether the skin you’re in is allowing you to breathe and move or not.
One way in which I can pat myself on the back about slowing down and one-pointedness is when I take time to meditate each morning.
My soul objective in meditation is to open my heart to love – loving others and myself. I’ve been at it for over two years and let me tell you, dropping judgments, having courageous conversations with friends, being vulnerable… hard work, my friend.
And every day I spend at least 20 minutes feeling my way into graciousness and the promise of love.
I love you,
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