The Depths

I think there is something in us that yearns for immersion - into water, into life, into love, into drugs.  The question is: how do we find depth in a world that bounces mostly on the surface of things, that stays in the shallows of life, so to speak?

I look for depth like a starving person looks for food.  I check out endless spiritual books from the library, reading Thomas Merton's journals and trying to understand how he thought, and how he arrived at his insights, how his mind learned to go so deep.  I read the instructions of the desert Benedictines and their deep analysis on how to deal with thought.  My meditation teacher, Paul Muller-Ortega, says that meditation is where you learn to go deep, and then you can apply that capacity to everything.  You go deep into everything, you break free of the shallow dimension of life.  I read the texts of yoga and I really get the insight they had; they were WAY less distracted than me and way less distractable.  They had this ability called focus, where they could hold to one idea, thought, contemplation, or vision for a long, long time, until the magnitude of it revealed itself.  When you can do this, you see into the miraculous nature of everything and, the texts tell us, you live in a state of wonder.

There is a separate society of people who are interested mostly in optimizing their experience of depth in life: not through outer outrageousness, like bungee jumping or skydiving, but through exploring the true capacities of the human heart and mind.  For me, this is the most fascinating investigation imaginable, and a worthy use of a life.   

I aspire to this, even more than ever getting my foot behind my head.  Knowing that what I pay attention to, I become, I have lately started a practice of holding a contemplation in my mind during the day.  Every morning I choose a short phrase or sentence, the kind of material that opens a door when you read it, and I hold it in my heart/mind as often as I can think of it during the day.  Sometimes I write it on a small piece of paper and carry it around, like keeping a wisdom teacher close by me during the day.

This practice is helping to train my mind to go deep, to not be pulled around by the nose by my emotional predilections.  If the phrase is a good one, it seems to apply to nearly everything I encounter in my day, and helps me keep a wide inner lens, which includes forgiveness, compassion, and kindness.  There's a lot of that in the depths, and I long to immerse myself there more and more.