29th July, 2021
Grasshopper
Once upon a time, when borders were open, I spent a year living and travelling in India. Early on in my travels I was taken to the Osho Meditation Resort in Pune. It was there that I discovered the joy within for the first time in my life. A joy not dependent on anything outside of me. I told my travelling partner to leave me there. I wanted to stay longer and experience more of the blissful feeling that was opening up inside of me. In the end, I think I stayed for 6 weeks.
The meditation resort is known for it's active meditations. There was a dynamic meditation to start the day that included some cathartic jumping up and down and the releasing of sound. It moved onto other meditations such as whirling, humming, shaking and conscious dance. Active meditation gave me a whole new perspective on what meditation could be.
One day after leaving the meditation hall I was standing at the water fountain waiting to have a drink. The old man standing next to me had the classic guru look; kind eyes and a long white beard. A grasshopper landed on the fountain just before I drank. It’s funny what the mind can do in a flicker of a second. In an associative stream, the grasshopper was connected with the movie karate kid, to the wise man Mr Miyagi and his student referred to as “grasshopper.” Thanks to the appearance of the Grasshopper in that moment, I had opened myself up to listen with a beginner's mind.
A friendly place, it was usual to talk to people. If you wanted to be in silence you simply wore a badge that said “In Silence”. The man asked me what meditations I enjoyed most. On reflection, the meditations I loved the most were the humming meditation called Nadabrahma and the whirling meditation where you got to whirl like a dervish. The popular school of thought was that it was beneficial to find the meditation best suited to you and go into it exclusively. The idea was that sticking to one method would help you enter meditation more deeply. I think the man wanted to help me ascertain which meditation was the best medicine for me. He enquired sincerely as to how I felt after each of them.
The whirling was exhilarating. At first you lost all bearings in the room, but once you found your axis, you could stabilise with a new kind of awareness of space that felt like an all-encompassing peripheral vision. You could make out other whirlers appearing like soft clouds; human spinning tops gliding across the floor. At times you could hear little groans of ecstasy emanating from these human clouds. There was indeed a kind of ecstasy attached to the experience once you became more adept.
Imagine looking at a spinning fan - you no longer see the solid blade, but a see-through version of it. This visual impression of see-through humans was so wild. And then there is the moment when your body drops to the floor and you experience a clear-cut split between body/mind and spirit. A body being sucked down into the Earth with a reverberating spinning sensation and the stillness of spirit that was there all along; unmoving, now completely awake to itself, pervading the whole of space. At least that is the way I remember it now.
Whirling was also expressive. I loved the Sufi music that filled the hall when we whirled. One of the teachers had a theory that if every man painted one big toe with nail polish, the world would be a much better place. I remember thinking how true his quirky theory was. He practiced what he preached and always had a coloured toe. The other teacher, wise in a more traditional way, may have been talking to me when he said the meditation was not a circus. Come to think of it, I never saw a real dervish deviate to dance moves in whirling. So yes - on reflection, whilst I loved this meditation, it was appealing to the part of me that loves excitement - the part that loves a coffee for the zing of it or gets swept away in a current of creativity and forgets to eat.
In contrast, I always felt incredibly grounded after the humming meditation. I still got to be immersed in sound - this time with the gentle soothing sounds of human voices. I seemed to sleep well after humming and loved the part when all the sounding stopped and what remained was so loud; the peace penetrating. Perhaps this is where the learning happens, in the stark contrasts of sensations, the dramatic shift forcing our attention inwards where we become intensely aware of our living presence, our naked beingness, rich and full, in and of itself.
I was a grateful grasshopper after that chat and sensed that the Nadabrahma meditation was the most nurturing for my constitution. The one that would really support me to stay healthy, balanced, but most of all - grounded. Whilst the real Sufi whirling meditation is sacred and peaceful, for the sake of comparison, there’s definitely an element of excitement, compared to sitting down on the Earth and producing a humming sound that resonates bell-like through the body. I'm connecting it to our current situation where we’ve exchanged the exotic dreamings of far-away-lands and experiences, to discover the beauty in our own backyards. A radical renunciation of the mind-set that once sought these wild and exciting things on the outside, as a way to fulfil the aching need for happiness, fulfilment and true connection that blossoms from within.
Lockdowns gave some of us a forced glimpse of what happens when we stop running from distraction to distraction, meeting to meeting, social engagement to social engagement in a dizzy whirl. The emptiness can be terrifying when devoid of spiritual guidance or initiation. But in truth, this emptiness we arrive at through meditation contains infinite possibilities. It is the space where we meet our true essence; the joy, peace and connection we all seek. It is the space where solutions drop in and creative possibilities open like doors to guide us forward.
The beauty of slowing down is that it offers a precious opportunity to process and heal emotions as we journey through life. An opportunity to heal the past that lives in our flesh and shapes our present. Through our choice to slow down and heal, we don’t perpetuate and pass on the trauma that is accumulating from generation to generation. Our personal healing journeys can give our life meaning and each individual healing reverberates throughout the whole of life.
So where to start?
The best place to start is to stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Make yourself a cup of tea
Sit in the sunshine
Connect to a plant or a tree
Breathe deeply into your heart
Open up your beginner’s mind
Listen to the Earth
Paint a toenail any colour your heart desires
Photo by Wulan Sari on Unsplash
The meditation resort is known for it's active meditations. There was a dynamic meditation to start the day that included some cathartic jumping up and down and the releasing of sound. It moved onto other meditations such as whirling, humming, shaking and conscious dance. Active meditation gave me a whole new perspective on what meditation could be.
One day after leaving the meditation hall I was standing at the water fountain waiting to have a drink. The old man standing next to me had the classic guru look; kind eyes and a long white beard. A grasshopper landed on the fountain just before I drank. It’s funny what the mind can do in a flicker of a second. In an associative stream, the grasshopper was connected with the movie karate kid, to the wise man Mr Miyagi and his student referred to as “grasshopper.” Thanks to the appearance of the Grasshopper in that moment, I had opened myself up to listen with a beginner's mind.
A friendly place, it was usual to talk to people. If you wanted to be in silence you simply wore a badge that said “In Silence”. The man asked me what meditations I enjoyed most. On reflection, the meditations I loved the most were the humming meditation called Nadabrahma and the whirling meditation where you got to whirl like a dervish. The popular school of thought was that it was beneficial to find the meditation best suited to you and go into it exclusively. The idea was that sticking to one method would help you enter meditation more deeply. I think the man wanted to help me ascertain which meditation was the best medicine for me. He enquired sincerely as to how I felt after each of them.
The whirling was exhilarating. At first you lost all bearings in the room, but once you found your axis, you could stabilise with a new kind of awareness of space that felt like an all-encompassing peripheral vision. You could make out other whirlers appearing like soft clouds; human spinning tops gliding across the floor. At times you could hear little groans of ecstasy emanating from these human clouds. There was indeed a kind of ecstasy attached to the experience once you became more adept.
Imagine looking at a spinning fan - you no longer see the solid blade, but a see-through version of it. This visual impression of see-through humans was so wild. And then there is the moment when your body drops to the floor and you experience a clear-cut split between body/mind and spirit. A body being sucked down into the Earth with a reverberating spinning sensation and the stillness of spirit that was there all along; unmoving, now completely awake to itself, pervading the whole of space. At least that is the way I remember it now.
Whirling was also expressive. I loved the Sufi music that filled the hall when we whirled. One of the teachers had a theory that if every man painted one big toe with nail polish, the world would be a much better place. I remember thinking how true his quirky theory was. He practiced what he preached and always had a coloured toe. The other teacher, wise in a more traditional way, may have been talking to me when he said the meditation was not a circus. Come to think of it, I never saw a real dervish deviate to dance moves in whirling. So yes - on reflection, whilst I loved this meditation, it was appealing to the part of me that loves excitement - the part that loves a coffee for the zing of it or gets swept away in a current of creativity and forgets to eat.
In contrast, I always felt incredibly grounded after the humming meditation. I still got to be immersed in sound - this time with the gentle soothing sounds of human voices. I seemed to sleep well after humming and loved the part when all the sounding stopped and what remained was so loud; the peace penetrating. Perhaps this is where the learning happens, in the stark contrasts of sensations, the dramatic shift forcing our attention inwards where we become intensely aware of our living presence, our naked beingness, rich and full, in and of itself.
I was a grateful grasshopper after that chat and sensed that the Nadabrahma meditation was the most nurturing for my constitution. The one that would really support me to stay healthy, balanced, but most of all - grounded. Whilst the real Sufi whirling meditation is sacred and peaceful, for the sake of comparison, there’s definitely an element of excitement, compared to sitting down on the Earth and producing a humming sound that resonates bell-like through the body. I'm connecting it to our current situation where we’ve exchanged the exotic dreamings of far-away-lands and experiences, to discover the beauty in our own backyards. A radical renunciation of the mind-set that once sought these wild and exciting things on the outside, as a way to fulfil the aching need for happiness, fulfilment and true connection that blossoms from within.
Lockdowns gave some of us a forced glimpse of what happens when we stop running from distraction to distraction, meeting to meeting, social engagement to social engagement in a dizzy whirl. The emptiness can be terrifying when devoid of spiritual guidance or initiation. But in truth, this emptiness we arrive at through meditation contains infinite possibilities. It is the space where we meet our true essence; the joy, peace and connection we all seek. It is the space where solutions drop in and creative possibilities open like doors to guide us forward.
The beauty of slowing down is that it offers a precious opportunity to process and heal emotions as we journey through life. An opportunity to heal the past that lives in our flesh and shapes our present. Through our choice to slow down and heal, we don’t perpetuate and pass on the trauma that is accumulating from generation to generation. Our personal healing journeys can give our life meaning and each individual healing reverberates throughout the whole of life.
So where to start?
The best place to start is to stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Make yourself a cup of tea
Sit in the sunshine
Connect to a plant or a tree
Breathe deeply into your heart
Open up your beginner’s mind
Listen to the Earth
Paint a toenail any colour your heart desires
Photo by Wulan Sari on Unsplash