Music Dear friends,
Welcome to this meditation,
In which I invite you to tell me if you are OK,
And in which I invite you to ask the same question to the people you meet.
Let's close our eyes as we sit here for these few moments,
Taking a break,
Taking a breath,
Quoting the thoughts of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh,
As if these few moments are the axis on which the earth revolves,
Slowly,
Evenly,
Without rushing toward the future,
Seeing all the goodness and all the peace that can be found here in this present moment.
Welcome to these moments of awareness.
These moments can be life changing,
Important moments in our lives.
So we stop,
We slow down and stop,
Finally,
Pausing for just one minute to really become present,
Bringing body and mind here into the same room,
Introducing our bodies to our minds again.
We know too well how easy it is for them to become separate,
As we worry about the past and we worry about the future.
A one minute pause.
A pause.
A pause.
A pause.
A pause.
A pause.
Welcome back.
Next I invite you to ask yourself,
How are you feeling just now?
I don't mean the question,
How are you,
To which the usual response,
Instead of being the words good or bad,
Are the repeated words,
How are you?
My question to you is,
How are you feeling just now?
How are you really feeling?
Isn't it strange how we routinely exchange this,
How are you,
Expression?
Or maybe it's only me who does this,
But just think about it.
Imagine you are new in a building,
And you come up to someone and say,
Please,
Where is the nearest water cooler?
And they answer you,
Please,
Where is the nearest water cooler?
You would look at that person strangely and think,
What's going on here?
But when we greet someone with the words,
How are you,
And they respond,
How are you?
We don't see it as odd at all,
We don't bat an eyelid.
Now why would I be drawing your attention to this inattentive use of English?
Well,
In Australia,
September is a special month,
And the 10th of September is a special day.
I have after 70 years discovered a newly found sister in Australia,
Or she has discovered me,
But that's the story of another day.
But she tells me that in Australia,
They have dedicated September as a month when people ask,
Are you OK?
In a meaningful way.
The name of the project is the set of letters,
Are you OK?
Followed by a question mark.
The question is put in a way that encourages a meaningful response.
It's a project that's widely advertised with pens,
Lapel badges,
Armbands and posters,
That type of thing.
So it gives people an encouragement to speak up if something is troubling them.
So when I opened today's meditation by asking you to stop and consider,
How are you feeling right now?
My hope is that you would stop,
And that you would give yourself a chance to notice how you feel.
And be prepared to tell someone if you are not feeling so good.
Hopefully most of the time,
Most of us feel good,
Or let's hope we would at least give ourselves a pass if we were to complete our answers on a scale of 1 to 10.
But some of the time,
All of us will feel under the weather for a bit.
There might be something going on in our own lives that's causing us worry or upset.
That's only to be expected from time to time.
It could be something to do with our lives or our relationships at a certain point.
It could be to do with our own health,
Or the health of someone we care about.
The death or the expected death of someone we love.
It could be a family situation that we cannot manage right now.
It might be worries about money.
And these days all of us must be troubled by the coronavirus that's still causing death and the disruption to what was our normal way of life.
So if a friend or a colleague asks how are you at a time when you are feeling blue,
Please don't be afraid to say how it is.
We all have to wear masks these days to help one another get through the coronavirus pandemic.
But we don't need to keep on a psychological mask,
Preventing people from offering a listening ear when we would benefit from a listening ear.
It's not that we would expect even a close friend to offer a solution.
Maybe they could and maybe they would and that would be fine.
But a listening ear might be all that we need.
Someone to just listen and to tell us that what we are feeling is not abnormal,
That we are not oddities.
We don't want to listen attentively,
Not to a life story,
We don't want to burden them with that,
But just to hear how things are with us in this very moment.
Someone simply listening to us non-judgmentally can help us to sort out our feelings by ourselves,
Just by the simple kind act of listening.
Let's take another short pause,
One minute.
Welcome back again.
This opening up is of course something that's a little unusual for us.
We put on our psychological masks out of habit.
We let the world see only what we think we want them to see.
We display happiness when we are sad,
Confidence when we are unsure of ourselves.
We show a funny side when if the truth were known we would rather go into a corner and have a good cry.
And when we hear that question,
How are you,
We are programmed to respond fine,
Or the dreaded return question,
How are you.
This gives nothing away and it lets nobody in.
You may have come across a book by John Powell,
The title Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?
In this book John explores this tendency of ours,
Basically it comes from a feeling of rejection.
Being accepted is very important to us.
So we put on this front and we try to make the other person think we are something which we wish we were,
But which we are not really.
We are all the poorer when we only relate to one another in this superficial way.
It can lead to loneliness,
Depression and even suicide.
Here in Ireland one of the organisations dealing with depression is an organisation called AWARE.
I am told that AWARE have had a 60% increase in calls between the beginning of March and the end of August 2020.
They say one in ten of us here at any one time can suffer from depression,
But many people hide their condition and never get help.
The RUOK project in Australia aims to help create a world where we are all more connected and we are all protected from suicide.
Their mission is to inspire everyone to meaningfully connect with the people around them and to support anyone struggling with life.
To help people more meaningfully connect with one another and meaningfully ask about lives ups and downs.
To give us all a greater sense of belonging because we get to know that people are there for us and we are there for them.
It works both ways of course.
We need to be prepared to open up and we need to watch out for other people to open up.
Let's enjoy another short pause.
One minute,
Just 60 seconds.
Welcome back again.
So our invitation in this meditation is to let down that guard.
Take a chance.
Admit vulnerability.
Let someone in.
They may be vulnerable too.
This exchange of feelings is needed more than ever in our time when we are more and more locked into our own individual worlds.
We live in a world where we each have our own screens,
Our own independent corners.
But this independence is not without its risks.
And to add to our separateness many of us are working from home these days.
We have our screens,
Our corners,
But we can become imprisoned by them.
The worries on our minds are not shared.
Left to ourselves these worries can grow and grow until they overwhelm us.
The trees of loneliness are not cut down or pruned and they can become a forest.
This is a greater danger when social media only shows the best sides of everyone else,
All adding to our own feelings of separateness,
Difference and inadequacy.
The remedy is for us to listen out for other people and to allow other people to listen out for us.
So putting ourselves on the listening side,
The R U OK project offers us this advice as we take a step to helping others.
1.
Are we reasonably ready?
Are we willing to genuinely listen?
And can we give as much time as is needed?
2.
Are we reasonably prepared?
Do we understand that if we ask someone how they are doing,
The answer could be an admission,
No I am not so well.
So we must be ready to offer the gift of a listening ear.
The R U OK project reminds us that we can't fix someone else's problems,
But remember it will always help if we listen.
And we must accept that the other person might not be ready to talk to us now,
Or they might not wish to talk to us.
3.
We are reminded to pick a suitable moment,
A suitable time,
A suitable place,
A place which is relatively private and comfortable.
And have we figured out a time that would be good for the other person to chat?
And have we made sure that we have enough time to listen properly and to chat?
Now these suggestions are not designed to put you off helping.
Remember the old advice that the best can be the enemy of the good.
These are just tips to help us set the scene for what might be a really important exchange.
In other words,
We shouldn't feel that everything has to be right before we set out to listen.
The subtitle of the R U OK project is A conversation could change a life.
That life could be your life.
It could be the life of someone you know and care about already.
A kind word and a genuine enquiry as to how things are going could make all the difference.
That is the message for today.
Watch out for one another.
And maybe use hello or hi or some other greeting keeping the how are you for a situation where we really mean how are you.
I would like to end our meditation today with a poem from a wonderful book that has been sent to me by a listener in Oregon in the US.
A person who follows my meditations on Insight Climber.
The book is called The Grasshopper Chronicles and is written by Rick Terwilliger.
This poem is called It Will Pass.
When we identify with the pain that is in us and around us,
We are overwhelmed by the storm of emotions it creates.
We begin to believe pain cannot be removed except by passing it on to others.
In truth,
It can only be resolved with acceptance and release.
Blame cannot be assigned to others.
We must own our pain and it is up to us to resolve it.
Breathe with the pain you feel.
Do not fear the strong emotions that come.
If you cannot face it alone,
Reach out to those around you if you must.
Fall into their arms and let the emotions flow.
The feelings will be fierce and the mind will believe it will last forever.
It will not.
It will resolve.
It will pass.
All things do.
Words of Rick Terwilliger.
Namaste.
