A Meditation on the Stars

Photo: Steve Marshall

I guess I'm risking telling you another shoe story but yesterday I was at the Jamyang Rooms (beautiful place and amazing food!) for a workshop with Tim Malnick (@differentspace) inquiring into 'The Paradox of Ambition'.

Tim questioned our thinking around ambition; that we commonly assume success is a formulation of Better/Future/Self/Effort:

• Things will get better
• In the future
• If I take control my self
• And put in lots of effort

With my lifescript completely captured (!), Tim asked us to contemplate times when we had been really happy. My examples were around moments of observation and communication; a photograph when I know I have really 'seen' someone, a shared joke, moments of intimacy, creativity...

And none of my examples of happiness fell into the Better/Future/Self/Effort assumption - I know that if I try hard to get a great image, or if I'm thinking of the way a conversation or dialogue might begin to unfold, I miss the magic of the emerging moment.

Then Tim asked us to try an 'eyes open' meditation; if thoughts arose we were to note them and simply let them go.

So far so good.  But then Nicole, a participant from Global Generation, took her boots off and I quite literally saw stars...

Well, I guess this meditation stuff isn't so simple after all... Tim's next workshop at the Jamyang Rooms, where he is leading an inquiry into stress and burnout, is on 21 November...