Belonging requires failure & solitude
Deepest meditation is desire to come alive. Deepest meditation creates a sense of sacred belonging to our bodies, communities, natural world, planet and cosmos….but we have to pass through portals of failure and solitude.
I recently read an article printed by Tricycle magazine by a Buddhist author Sarah Kokernot. She wrote, “I spent five years writing a novel. While I worked on the manuscript, I held two part-time jobs, raised a small child, managed chronic illness, lived through the pandemic, became pregnant, moved across state lines, and gave birth. I struggled to complete the novel… When the book finally felt ready, I sent it to agents. Everyone liked something about it—but not enough to sign me as a client. After six rejections on full reads, I stopped querying. In the wake of these rejections, I felt….devastation. And so, I did what devastated people often do. I turned to what felt greater than myself. “
She explained her struggles and failures as an author and as a a meditator. But at some point she said, “And I just gave up. I let myself fail.” “In the deliberately burnt land of devastation, I saw a teaching reflected back to me. I had to destroy what I had created in order to allow for new growth.”
Yes, yes, yes! I thought. We want to come alive with things we do in our lives but we forget to destroy the individualism, excessive workohalism and silence our phones. A busy, hasty, distracted goal-oriented mind can’t belong, care or be compassionate. We want to belong, but we forget to pass through the necessary portal of being alone in stillness. We forget that communion with others requires communion with inner vastness. We want to be happy but we forget to embrace the grief and rage that must be embraced on the path to deepest joy.
Yes, there are times when meditation can feel like a profound act of failure. To go into the sense of inner wildness, away from the gaze and projections of others, has the quality of becoming a bit naked, raw and vulnerable. But only to come deeply alive. Please don’t be afraid. Sangha is here for you. Many wise elders and teachers are rooting for you. Keep going. Sign up for your next silent retreat.