I was sitting in meditation the other more and my monkey mind was jumping all around the place. That’s alright. Acceptance. I’m at peace with my monkey mind. In the middle of random thoughts that were popping up and promptly acknowledged and shown the exit, the sun caught my attention.
It was just beyond the horizon (where else would it be?) and I had this thought that may seem silly and super obvious and totally not original, but it was simply: the sun’s not rising. We’re moving eastward, turning with the planet, until we come face to face with it. And when the sun’s “going down in the West” it’s not actually going down in the West. We’re just leaving it behind. But don’t worry, we’ll visit again tomorrow.
Why is this important? Even though I immediately knew I’m far from the first person to see things this way, this thought belonged to others until I took it for myself as well. The thought arose, not the sun. The importance of this thought, though, is not really about the the sun and the planet and how we’re all revolving and hurtling our way through the universe. It’s that we get such fixed ideas in our minds about how things unfold for us. Something happens and we tell ourselves a story a thousand times, like about the sun rising and falling, not always taking the time to switch our thinking around a bit.
Perhaps it was only the meditation that triggered this particular thought. Monkey Mind threw me a banana.
I would like to not limit myself so much in my thinking. I have a thousand paths I’ve carved in the landscape of my thoughts, well-traveled paths I’ve gotten stuck on. I’d like to explore a bit, and I will, but I must set my intention to do so. Perhaps not during meditation, but for reveries. To lie down and daydream the way I used to do when I was younger. Those are the times where I think it’d be best to let these thoughts point the way to new paths.
Who knows where they will guide me?
