Insight While Sitting by The Path Meditation Teacher Training student Melissa Pelham
Gaining insight into the impermanence of time.
Yesterday morning I was sitting for my 25-minutes (we are required to meditate 25 minutes each day as part of The Path’s Meditation Teacher Training program), and it was fairly early into the practice, while I was still doing a focus on the breath mindfulness meditation, and just beginning to incorporate awareness of thoughts and emotions before moving into a visual Opening to Life meditation …or that was the “plan” anyway).
I was definitely tapping into an awareness of the fleeting, flowing quality of that moment, when suddenly out of nowhere, I had this insight into the concept of TIME. I was struck by how ‘artificial’ time is; a manmade construct that is simply born out of a need to control. To “control” what is impermanent and constantly evolving. An attempt to bind to that which is slipping through us and by us, daily, weekly, monthly, annually - indefinitely in fact.
IMPERMANENCE was being shown to me in a new and enlightened way. The laws of the universe are to flow. This energy cannot be held, contained or stopped. It is its nature to constantly evolve, shift, grow, become - and we humans make stabs at trying to put safe and reassuring boundaries around it. We created the concepts and constructs of time to soothe our ego-based fears. And we live with a false notion that we have ways to temporarily rein in the passage of life, events and aging - when in truth, we do not. The Four Noble Truths tell us otherwise, and we would be wise to follow them to ease our grip on that which we cannot hold.
On another note!! Yesterday, I led my first private meditation group - a group of women that I’ve studied with and known for a few years now. They are all very open-minded and intuitive and “connected”, spiritually - and this was new to all of them! We met for about 30 minutes, with me doing some introductions to Buddhist practices and philosophy first, and then guiding them for 15 minutes in a mindfulness of breath meditation (which none of them had done before). It was a beautiful experience for ALL of us, and I got very encouraging feedback. Thank you for adding the ‘nudge’ in our Meditation Teacher Training coursework to begin guiding people in our community and suggesting that we do this; it is very rewarding and helpful both for me and for everyone whom I am now guiding!