A Meditation on the Immeasurable Expanse
By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of Mindfulness+
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I love the Pacific Northwest. I spent the first three years of my life in the Seattle area while my father was in law school, and each of the dozens of times I’ve returned, I just drink in the air. It’s amazing to be breathing the air in and seeing all the lush greenery and bodies of water. The canals and the lakes and the channels and the sounds — it’s a magical part of the world to me.
Not too long ago, I was connecting on a flight from Seattle up to Victoria, British Columbia. It's a short flight, less than 30 minutes, and I was seeing Seattle behind. And as we descended I was just looking at this gorgeous, lush greenery and huge bodies of water. And I had a simple recognition come to me, which was something like, “Oh, the Pacific Northwest — that doesn't start in the United States and end obediently in the United States. The Pacific Northwest cuts across these boundaries and these arbitrary lines we draw. It transcends any national boundaries that we've drawn over it as human beings.” That recognition was magical to me — the recognition that we can't hem life in by drawing a national boundary.
As it turns out, I was flying up to Victoria to a Christian meditation retreat. I’d spent a lot of time in Buddhist meditation retreats, but not much in Christian retreats. And I just had this very stark awareness in that moment that I'm calling this thing a Christian meditation retreat, but that the boundary between Christianity and Buddhism and other religions is at least as arbitrary as this line we've drawn straight through this vast area known as the Pacific Northwest.
That recognition felt incredible to me. It just felt freeing to know I'm going to some place with people to set my heart on something that I deeply care about. Never mind that it's a Christian retreat or a Buddhist retreat or any other kind of retreat.
There was a time in my life when these constructs could not have felt more different to me. They couldn't have been more different to me than a US dollar and a Canadian dollar.
We've drawn arbitrary lines over the earth itself and called them the edges of nations. What if we've also drawn arbitrary lines around traditions? We call them very different traditions with very different purposes.
And even within these traditions, we have constructs like salvation and awakening. And what if these two are just ideas in our minds, and the ideas obscure the raw and wild territory that is actually real?
That's what I'd like to play with. Let go of these boundaries. Allow these lines in our minds to fade and just plunge into the primary territory. That's the invitation. Go ahead and get comfortable. We'll practice a little bit.
*Start the Meditation*
So wherever you are, whatever you're doing, this is a gift of a moment to just come back to yourself. Whatever that means — feeling your feet on the ground, feeling the support of the ground beneath you, maybe just exhaling and letting it all go and appreciating your aliveness in this moment.
The gift of life, this vitality quickening you, animating you. We have this gift in this moment to be alive, to be awake, and we don't know if we'll have this gift in the next moment. We can only deeply receive this gift and enjoy it — give ourselves back to life in whatever way our heart is called to.
Some people hear the word salvation, and their heart opens up. They feel great joy and great hope. Others hear the word salvation and they might want to cringe with the different connotations that that particular construct carries for them.
Notice what the word salvation does in your body and your being in this moment. What does it evoke? What about the construct of liberation and enlightenment? Some people hear this sound, hear this word, and their awareness just opens up into the immeasurable expanse. Just the finger pointing at the moon is enough of a reminder to take them back to this primordial essence. Others hear this word, the sound, this construct, and they contract or they become disinterested. It sounds like so much new age, voodoo, fluffy spirituality. Notice what's true for you in this moment — the splash you feel through your body, through your being when you hear this word, this construct of liberation, enlightenment.
Start to let go of the sounds, the words, the constructs, the lines that we've drawn across reality, and just allow yourself to be real. Allow yourself to be reality unmediated by any thought, any opinion. Just relax and feel yourself to be this primordial essence.
Notice as you relax how sensitive you are, how awake you are, how everything you experience, the fullness of this moment arising, you experience because you're aware, you're awake, intelligent, conscious spirit. There's no name for it, but here we are being when you really just plunge into this simple feeling of being, it feels as though we're ancient.
Whatever this intelligence is that is awakened, this moment did not just suddenly become aware the moment of our human birth. It seems to stretch back across the eons. You might be able to sense that the very intelligence you are in this moment stretches endlessly forward across the eons, even beyond time. All together, this timeless, boundless essence in you has always been you, has always been at the very heart of what you are.
On one hand, it takes great effort, great discipline to train our focus, our attention on this timeless aspect of cell. And on the other hand, that takes no effort at all to simply be to radiate this being, to be aware, to be awake. Any name we give to this quality, to this essence, to this territory. We'll always be too small to comprehend the fullness of what we really are.
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