Article by Neil McKinlay
Photo by Stefan Jonsson
Neil McKinlay is a meditation instructor who teaches on Vancouver Island. His next Queenswood retreat is our ‘Meditation and Recovery' on Sept. 17-19. His website can be found at www.neilmckinlay.com.
Years ago, while trying to get Learning to Swim published, my agent sent drafts of the book to prominent individuals in related fields. We hoped to win endorsements from some of these people, something that might tilt an editor’s opinion our way.
One of our recipients was a former Olympian. He offered a warm review of the book, with some clear qualifications. “Make it more about swimming,” he offered, “not so much about meditation.” Another had just released a well-received work on human potential. “More spiritual practice,” he commented, “less sport.” A number of publishers gave similar feedback. I remember one writing, “Swimming and life - the book needs to be about one or the other, not both.”
Yet one of the central points of a book entitled Learning to Swim: Reflections On Living was that sport and spirituality, how we swim and how we live, cannot be taken apart. Our approach to relationships will be exposed with our teammates, our world view will reflect back each time we stand on a starting block and peer into the water below. The two are intimately, inescapably linked. The deeper we dive into one, the more is revealed of the other.
The same can be said of meditation: life and practice cannot be separated. When we walk into our first two-hour workshop, though most of us are overtly seeking a small measure of relief from the demands of our days, we are entering into a process that will certainly touch upon every aspect of our existence.
We might soon see, for instance, that our incessantly busy schedule is mirrored in a mind that will not pause on the breath. Or that the aggression fueling our relentless and impossible quest for perfection echoes in the judgment which greets every instant of our practice. ‘I don’t have time to feel this way,’ we think while immersed in something at work. Is it any wonder that when uncertainty then comes up in our practice, we swat at it like an annoying bug? ‘This just can’t be right!’
Both these examples confront us with the truth that our lives are not left behind when we meditate, but are instead brought with us - or, more accurately, lay waiting. I suspect such an understanding informs a remarkable passage in Chellis Glendenning’s My Name Is Chellis and I’m In Recovery From Western Civilization. She writes: “just about everybody I know who is serious about personal healing, social change, and ecological rebalancing is in recovery: recovery from personal addiction, childhood abuse, childhood deprivation, the nuclear family, sexism, racism, urban alienation, trickle-down economics, combat service in the gender wars, the threat of extinction, linear thinking, the mind/body split, technological progress, and the mechanistic world view.” (ix)
When we begin to meditate, few of us suspect how much of our lives will be engaged. Most of us come in thinking like the Olympian, the author, and the publisher noted above: that meditation - like swimming - is somehow different, distinct, separate from life. This is one of many notions the practice will undermine if we stick with it long enough. Eventually, inevitably, we find the distraction of our busy days and the violence of trickle-down politics are sometimes as much a part of practice as posture and breath.
When this transformative realization presents itself, we will likely react. We might feel shock or disbelief. Our bodies might tingle with excitement or tense with resistance. I recall feeling as if I had been pushed off my seat upon first meeting this fact. Fortunately, in such moments our immediate task as practitioners remains straightforward as ever: we relax and return to the body without opinion or expectation, and there we wait for what is coming our way.
