Gong Show

Even my meditation app hates me. 

Grateful I am that my employer is focused on employee wellness. Tuesday lunch break is given over to mindfulness meditation with instructor Janet Sandman. Other days I make a little meditation time in my office using the Insight Timer app on my phone. It's free. It gongs, and gurgles with falling rainwater. And then I still have time for my sandwich.

Between phone settings and meditation app settings I scored a fail, not to be judgmental, but there it is. I was just sitting and breathing and counting "one" on each exhale and gently reminding my shoulders to stay away from my ears and kindly escorting thoughts out through the back hall to the fire exit over and over and over and the water was gurgling and gurgling and how could this only be fifteen minutes? I finally left my breathing to discover that the final gong setting was unspecified. It was never going to ding, no matter how long I set my thoughts on tiny origami boats and floated them off down the stream. Infinitely treading water while the sunburned lifesaving instructor in the Speedo quits without giving two weeks notice, clears out his locker, and drives off in the VW microbus, spewing gravel in the parking lot.


Looking out the window at the gorgeous yellow ginkgo leaves I gulp my sandwich. Thoughts onward CASCADE® 

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

No matter what, my dishwasher declines to open the detergent dispenser at the appointed time in the cycle. I try creative visualizations of suds bubbling out of the cave from behind the magic door. Letting go of expectations for the appliance did not work any better than attempts to chisel the solidified detergent with a kitchen knife.

In the busy household with young kids the sound of major home appliances running was more constant than breath or heartbeat. Wash to rinse to spin was my inner timer. App was short for appliance! The dishwasher was my chuckling spiritual guide.

Preschoolers pause for a mini-moment of breath awareness. Breathe in slowly through your nose smelling a flower. 1 - 2 - 3. Breathe out slowly through your mouth blowing a bubble. 1 - 2 - 3.

Leaving the mental default habits of enumerating, naming, judging, anticipating to become one with the cosmos, right? Wrong. The computer declines to send jobs to the physical printer right beside me on the desk. It wants to send the jobs to a cosmic printer in the clouds. GONG! Gong! Gongggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg


Recent library acquisitions:

  

And just fyi, Chuck Barris was the host of "The Gong Show." Also, the lifesaving instructor was named Merle.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder