A Failed Attempt at Meditation Leads to Revelation

In the past, I’ve written about my failed meditation retreat in the late 1990s at a nun’s convent in Connecticut. I also didn’t do spectacularly well during a few Jewish retreats and one led by a Buddhist Zen master in Illinois. But I really try, always thinking I’ll be able to relax and find that place of inner peace. I actually start most days briefly meditating for about five minutes. But recently, I felt I needed something more.

Perhaps, I thought, it would help during this difficult time if I participate in a session with a former rabbi of mine who now lives in Costa Rica doing mindfulness and spiritual growth workshops. I find him amazing and his words touch my soul. So, when I learned he was doing a workshop centered on a couple of verses from Genesis, the focus seemed perfect for me: Torah and mindfulness.

I didn’t know, though, that most of it would be guided meditation, and once we began, I immediately became worried.  “Close your eyes. I want you to visualize a time where you’ve felt comfortable, happy, secure,” he said. “A place, maybe from childhood, maybe in nature,” he continued in his beautiful soothing voice. Then he said, “there is a door. Open it, and now go deeper, deeper, step by step into a place of even greater comfort.”  I was already in trouble. I couldn’t visualize a place or a time that made me feel entirely comfortable. I was blocked (but surely there had been a time; I just couldn’t think!). I was getting more tense by the moment as I tried hard to imagine this place or time. I opened one eye a little, just to see how everyone else was doing! They all looked so calm, arms and legs relaxed, hands open. The sight of them made me feel even more like a failure.

I remembered my husband Tony’s one attempt at meditation with a leader who told the group, “visualize a person or figure that made you happy,” and he couldn’t. All Tony could think of (with his awful sense of humor) was frosty the snowman! I then smiled as I thought of that and completely lost my concentration. “Go deeper ‘til you are at the deepest place, sitting perhaps in a very comfortable chair, surrounded by cushions,” said the rabbi. Obsessed with my inability to have even made the first step, I could hardly wait until the meditation was over.

We then journaled about our feelings. My notes were all about feeling like a failure and how I’ve never been able to fully, totally relax and surrender myself. Should I share these thoughts? Would it be expressing my “truth” as the rabbi said? Or would it be sacrilege? I wondered if I should do the next session the following week. Maybe with practice, I could do this. But this other voice inside said, “No, you are not meant for this,” and I felt depressed and disappointed.

The next day, however, I felt surprisingly better.

Around 7pm, Friday evening, I was sitting in my soft blue chair—the chair I had reupholstered after Tony died—sipping a glass of Tuscan red wine in a crystal wine glass. I thought, this is nice, the color of the red wine in the crystal. I looked up and on the walls and ceiling of my apartment, there were rainbows and prisms, some tiny, some large, even oblong, scattered around as the sun moved closer to the horizon, the light sparking off the crystals hanging by the window. These displays of rainbows only last for about ten or fifteen minutes and only happen for a few months of the year, when the sun is perfectly aligned. It always feels like a miracle to me.

I sat there in my sky-blue chair, watching the sun slowly set, the sky turning orange, pink, crimson, dark grey, dark blue, constantly changing and shifting. I was transfixed. It is the summer solstice, when the sunsets go on for over an hour making the sky so beautiful and hypnotizing.

With that, I noticed I felt calm and at peace. My whole body was relaxed in my soft chair, its down cushions both enveloping and supporting me. This is what I could not feel in a guided group meditation. Maybe this is the place, this is the time. Not something from the past but now, in the apartment I have transformed into a place of beauty and color and texture, a place where I feel comfortable and protected. Maybe this will be a turning point for me.

Suddenly, I realized something that brought me to tears. When Tony died six months earlier, it had been the winter solstice, and he passed right after sunset. For months afterwards, I would sink into sadness as the sun set, and the sadness would linger for the evening. But now it was the summer solstice. It felt like a sudden revelation and the kind of thing John Donne could have written a poem about.

My overly active mind can make me feel overwhelmed with anxiety about the future, but it is also capable of recognizing patterns that make meaning out of the world. Perhaps this alignment of the universe will symbolize a hopeful realignment in my life.

I sat there for a long time, surrounded by light and color, my spirit lifted by the view. I was alone, but I was fine. Maybe this might be my new practice, at least until the days get shorter. Sitting here in my chair, looking west over the Hudson for a few minutes in the morning as the rising sun shines on the Palisades above the river, and then again in the evening watching the sun set and scatter color all around me. Kind of like morning and evening prayers.

My experience that evening made me feel grateful to be alive, to experience such beauty, even if it’s transient. I am happy to live in this place where, even if it has been the epicenter of the Coronavirus, I am comfortable, safe, and during such moments, at peace.