Strange Advice Welcomed

This advice may sound strange to you, but… when you’re worrying, don’t strive to empty your mind. Fill it to the brim, make it encompass the whole universe.

Sometimes during meditation, I suddenly feel how everything is always happening all at once. In every single second, water is running, cells are multiplying, people die, babies are born, tea is poured, cheeks are kissed, lives are changed, consciousness is vibrating.

A billion little grains of sand stacked on top of each other in a thin, vertical line without end or beginning.

And I am just one of those grains. And my anxiety is one of those grains.

Everything that is arising in me is just a tiny little spot in that deep vertical current that is the perpetual present.

What this image can do is:

1) shrink your worries to the size of a grain of sand, even if for a brief moment, even if the worries must be attended to later.

2) shift your focus from your daunting inner world to a renewed awareness of the interconnectedness of it all, to your senses, to all the grains of sand you can perceive through your senses at this very moment.

What do you hear? Smell? Feel? Who is around you? How are their grains arranged? How are they vibrating?

And every time you get carried away by your thoughts & attempt to build a sand castle with them while the waves just keep coming… you just return to that larger vision of endless little spots, all connected, and you feel the limits of your own awareness. How strange they suddenly seem.

Everything becomes strange. But it’s reassuring.

Remember that this bird’s eye view is always available.

Even if the worries must be attended to later.