Post on 16-Apr-2017
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Meditation in Shopping Mall
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Is it weird that I like to meditate in shopping malls? Is it odd that amidst the starkly lit, nature-free landscape of glass, concrete and consumerism, I find peace and centre?
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Don’t get me wrong, I love to get my med on out in the bush, or in my quiet space at home or in incense-filled sacred spaces. It’s just that I am a meditation junkie and I dose up on the present moment wherever I can get it.
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This week, as I found myself accompanying my lady-friend on a mission to Penrith Westfield to buy a pair of leggings, I decided that I was actually on a date to meditate.
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I got the idea from something Eckhart Tolle said on one of his spoken word audio CDs (stillness speaks or practicing presence – I can’t remember which). He said something like, whenever you find yourself waiting for someone, instead of waiting you can just connect to yourself and enjoy being you.
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That way, when whoever you were waiting for eventually shows up and asks, “Have you been waiting long?” you can say, “no. I haven’t been waiting at all. I’ve been standing here enjoying myself.”
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Every time I found myself in a different shop sitting outside the fitting rooms on the aptly named, ‘man chair’, I sat down, shut up and breathed. I simply connected to my inner spaciousness. I felt into my body and observed its pulsing rhythms, its subtle aliveness. I resided in awareness and simply enjoyed being myself.
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(Happily, my lady-friend provided me ample opportunity to get my meditation on because apparently, there is such a thing as the perfect
pair of leggings and it seems they’re really hard to find. We must have gone into half a dozen stores and lady-friend must have tried
on a menagerie of the not-quite-lingerie before she finally found her holy grail of knee hugging, leg warming cotton-elastin material)
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Eckhart Tolle said something else on that CD that was really profound for me. He said “to be enjoying yourself really means to be in joy in your self”.
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That to me sums up my relationship with meditation and the reason I do so much of it. I want to be in joy in my self! What can waiting, buying, consuming, offer me when I know how to be in joy in myself, simply by breathing and being, by holding my attention on an intention and observing the present moment with kindness and curiosity?
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I’ve spent I’ve spent much time this year connecting to nature– walking among trees, tending gardens, visiting the ocean, immersing myself in the natural rhythms of our planet as well as connecting to my own sad, joyful, dark, light, human and divine nature. Walking through Penrith Westfield was like visiting an alien landscape for me
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Experiencing it with fresh eyes, ears, heart, mind and body, I heard something I’d never heard before. I noticed an enchanting song of material happiness floating through the air. It was subtle and seductive, gentle yet insistent and the more I listened, I realised how poisonous it was.
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“Welcome human to my world of thing -pretty, sexy, amazing and interesting things. These things will make you better, fitter,
smarter, stronger, more beautiful, and more popular.
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You want them, don’t you? You need them, don’t you? It’s ok. Everyone does. In fact, it’s weird not to and you don’t want to be weird, do you?