It's A Zen Thing

 In the winter of 1994 - 1995 one of my nephews, I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and his friends got tired of me bitching about winter. They told me one evening that the next day they were kidnapping me to a small little ski area known as Maple Valley. A little place long since closed.

They were all snowboarders and they informed me that we were going to go there and that I was going to spend the day learning how to snowboard. They said that my bitching about not having anything to do and too cold and all of that had gotten really old and that I had to at least give this a try. If I didn't like it by the end of the day that I had at least tried and they would accept that.

This was the winter before I started going to recovery meetings. I was lost. Hated myself and everything else. Was not in a good space.

So we went. And by the end of the day I knew that they had won. I was hooked. Damn it :-) And they were surprised at how well I took to it. And for the rest of that winter I went and hit the slopes as much as I could. And I would not use substances while I was on the slopes. Somehow I found that I really enjoyed myself when on the hill without being high. Wow!!!

And when I rode my habit was go up the lift, ride down as fast as I possibly could, right on the edge of wiping out, and sometimes wiping out, to the bottom, back up and repeat. I did this all day.

What would happen was that the voices that constantly chattered in my head would get quiet after a while. I was just not paying attention to them. When one is right on the edge of disaster then one does not have the time or energy to engage with the internal dialog. At least I did not.

One of the things that happened, in the winter of 1995-96, was one day I was on Stratton MT in Vermont, it was sometime in February, and in the middle of the afternoon I did something unusual for me. After getting off the lift I went down about 10 fee or so and sat down to strap in my back foot. And the unusual thing was I did not get right up and go. I sat for a few minutes just taking in the day.

My mind was quiet. It had not caught on to I was not hurrying along. And I took in the day. The day was a blue sky that was about a zillion years deep. Not a cloud in the sky. The sun was shining brightly. The snow all around me was glistening in the sun. I was completely present in that moment.

For the first time in a very long time I was able to see, and take in, the beauty of the world around me. I was able to experience it fully and completely without any of the internal dialogue going on behind it.

After a short, indeterminate, amount of time I got up and continued to snowboard finishing out the day. Later that night, at a recovery meeting, I was talking with some people, either before or after the meeting, and I was talking about that experience. And, to me, it was just relating a moment without any significance. It did not seem like that big of a deal to me.

The people that I was talking all looked at me after in ways that I could not identify. And I finally asked them some version of What? I did not understand what they were looking at me like that for.

They tried to explain. And I still did not get it. The only thing I remember them saying is one of them saying something like Dude! That was an incredibly spiritual experience. And I still did not get it.

What I got was that for a moment in time I was at peace and present in the world for that moment in a way that I had never experienced before. And I still did not think it was a big deal.

Some time later, days, weeks, or months, not sure, I began to notice something else. When washing dishes I also had that same moment happening when I was present in the world, without the internal dialogue, and quiet, in a way that was not familiar, and not significant, not a big deal, either. While doing those dishes I just Was.

In each of these times all that was happening was I am therefore I am. That is the closest that I can get to it.

And that is what I mean by the title "It's A Zen Thing". For me those are moments when all that was in the moment is me and the world. No chattering in my head. No outside distractions of any sort. Just existing in the moment as it is with nothing else.

Peace. For one exquisite moment, Peace.

That is what people talk about, in my experience, when they are talking about meditation. The existing in that quiet space with nothing else going on.

I have experienced meditation myself. And I should, I think, experience it more. Because in my very few experiences of meditation, willful experience, not accidental, I have experienced wonderful moments like that for myself.

So folks, do you have experiences like that? Times when the whole of everything went away and you were just in the here and now with no outside distractions? Moments when the critic was quiet? What is your Zen thing?

Let me hear about it in the comments if you are willing.

For, it is in those moments, I believe, that we truly are divine. Not in the presence of. Actually are.

So I believe.

Namaste 🙏