The BUILD Meditation: 10/2, 7 am, Live via Zoom

March 2020. It was a tumultuous time.  We were running on adrenaline.

When you’re presented with a cresting wave, you either get out of its way, or face it. 

There is no way to get out of the way of a global pandemic.  You can only rise like the challenges themselves, and ride their wave(s) to the shore. We could come out of this, we told ourselves.  Better.  Stronger.  Together. 

6 months later.  The trough of the C-19 waves are deeper than we thought.  Maybe different than we originally imagined, but still deadly.  Deeper, wilder, and more eternal-seeming, than we originally thought. 

Into the breach, to keep myself creating, and foster a virtual creative community in the absence of my beloved physical creative communities, I began sharing The CREATE Meditation, a combination of gentle, effective meditation practices that I’d picked up over a lifetime, Sunday through Friday at 6:30 am via Zoom. 

Over the last six months, 25 or so people have dropped in to what has evolved into a 30-minute meditation.   Three of us have done it consistently, missing less than a handful of sessions due to technical difficulties, illness, or travel, and while I will not mention their names due to privacy, they are an integral part of how I have been able to face this unimaginable time.

If you were to ask me: what changed as the result of meditating 6 days a week, in the virtual company of others?  I would say: nothing.  And everything!  

When you meditate consistently, your whole entire being changes.  Moves up a level.  The range of what you would have previously considered a miracle becomes commonplace, ordinary enough that you might miss it, which is why sometimes it feels like nothing changes...until you pause to consider...

You're not getting as upset about what used to upset you.  You are freer to not choose something that does not bring you long-term happiness, when you are in the company of other people happily choosing it.  And you have a heightened awareness of in-coming ideas, with a greater ability to act on them. 

In meditation, truly, the proof is in the life you live, and is most potently found in your own quiet moments of reflection, rather than in anything external.  

Yet, it can be hard to justify these precious early morning moments spent seemingly doing nothing.  So to address the healthy skeptic that lives in me, and that I suspect lives in you too, consider this: in the six months I have been doing The CREATE Meditation in community with others, I put in motion a chain of events that created two books for the holiday Season, three video concerts of brand new songs inspired by Haiku Milieu, five streaming Jenny & Friends shows, six new songs, twenty-four collaboration blogs (like this!) and countless haiku.  

This is the farthest thing from a humble brag.  My hands are trembling as I type this and my heart is pounding.  Can it be?  YES, it is.  And, it felt ORDINARY. 

Almost as soon as the idea for the CREATE meditation began, I felt something else coming.  My notebooks are full of words that it could have been.  But the first word that ever came to me, “Build,” has become the foundation of this next meditation. 

The point of The BUILD Meditation is this: being with the unique blueprint of what you’re creating, aligning with inspiration, and energizing the next steps so you can follow them easily. 

THAT’S IT. 

Starting Friday, October 2, I am offering The BUILD Meditation at 7:00 am on Friday and Sunday mornings at 7:00 am, the two days of the week that I am most aware of what I both want and need to “build.” 

I would love to have you with us, for both or either CREATE and BUILD.  Particularly as our ability to gather in person is still so limited, there is something precious and irreplaceable about opening ourselves to a greater flow of inspiration and creativity as a group, within the comfort of our own “sanctuaries,” be they in our homes or out in nature, during our meditation. 

A big thank you to everyone who's participated in The CREATE Meditation, which continues Sunday-Friday at 6:30 am via Zoom (message me for the link.)  

And eternal gratitude to our daily CREATE participants, who’s expanding creativity is a source of wonder.  Send them a good thought if you have a spare.  They are testing out The BUILD Meditation with me until we go live this Friday, 10/2 at 7:00 am. 

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