Ignition, Authenticity, and Seeing

There's this moment right before I light the candles in my living room to meditate in the mornings. The place is dark, feels like the middle of the night, and I feel stiff and cranky, convinced it would be more beneficial to get another few moments of sleep, convinced the meditation/prayer process is an elaborate form of bull shit.

And then I strike the match, put the flame to the candles, and something shifts. It happens very quickly, instantaneously actually. My cranky, tightness fades away, and I find my sitting in what is real.

I've tested out the legitimacy of this ignition. I watch my behavior, my interactions with other people and my surroundings on the days I give in to my initial resistance and "sleep in," skip the candles and the meditation. Invariably on those days I feel lousy, I catch myself in more augments with people, sometimes I find myself literally tripping through the day, prone to bruises and accidents. I'm actually more tired on the days I skip the sit.

All of us have this choice, not simply in the morning when we pray or meditate, but all through the day. We can choose - did I mention it was instantaneous? It doesn't take a minute, a second, .35 seconds, it happens the moment we remember to do it - we can always, at all times, choose to be authentic, and fashion ourselves into who we really are instead of being pejorative. The root of the word pejorative is perjury. When we allow ourselves to trip around in a tight daze, unaware or ourselves and the truth of who we are, we commit perjury.

Today is a good time to be honest. It doesn't make sense to act like a clenching, grabbing being when that is false. It makes sense to tune in to the truth. We do that when we notice we are tight, and then ask for help, from the inside out. For me it helps to visualize people in my mind's eye who love and know my authentic self. One of those personages for me is poet Gary Lemons. He gave a poetry reading at Feathered Pipe Ranch this summer and his presence was so authentic, so real, that it inspires me whenever I visualize him sitting there. Another person who helps jog me into the truth is my grandmother. As a child when we'd go to her house - and she didn't even speak English, the acknowledging happened without a word - she'd look at me and I'd see the truth of myself in her eyes.

The formula is: notice the tightening, ask for truth, and invoke the presence of someone who sees that truth in us. We don't have to sit down and light literal candles to do that.

Today I am open to the ignition, ready to see and be seen.