“In the beginning, meditation can be like a waterfall,” a wise meditation teacher once said. He was describing the cascade of thoughts that we discover inside our mind when we sit for meditation practice. And, what he was stating is fact and normal for most people.
The reason for the seeming abundance of inner thoughts is that, for a short time, there is nothing distracting us from them. Only the sitting is going on, nothing else – except in our mind. With this experience, the adventure of learning meditative focus has already revealed something of importance: there’s a lot going on inside our mind all the time. And, with outer life, responsibilities, or conversations not there to engage us, we can discover what’s going on inside.
Flow is:
- at first, the cacophony that we find inside,
- then, flow is discovering that there is peace in the natural spaces between thoughts that arise,
- eventually, flow is the experience of the natural inner peace more than the arising thoughts. As a result, the thoughts decrease in vibrancy and peace increases, and peace creates a flow of its own.
Downloadable podcast: Like a waterfall