Posted inHenry's Messages

Message from Henry: Liming

January 14, 2020

…fully allow thoughts to arise, endure and pass away…

Many of us don’t live in ways that involve regular doses of communal “lounging,” or hanging out – or “liming” as they used to call it in Trinidad. When I played in bands there, to “lime” was to relax, chat, do nothing much, just be hanging out together. There would be long stretches of time between rehearsals, recording sessions and performances, when there wasn’t much to do, and that was how they mostly got filled. But it was a common pastime on the island, music aside.

Granted that in the modern west the pressures on our lives generally allow us to do little “liming”, it’s natural that when we do settle into rest and stillness on a meditation cushion, a natural digestive process starts operating. It’s often the first chance our heart-minds get to digest the recent happenings in our lives. Naturally, thoughts about these things may surface – a thought about a meeting, a friendship, an event of some kind in our recent past or future. 

There’s nothing unhealthy in this. We need some time to rest and restore, and part of that can be a kind of natural digestion, through thinking, of where we’re at, what we’ve been doing, and generally taking stock.

 So this is another reason not to get upset about thinking in our meditation. Just fully allow thoughts to arise, endure and pass away. Allow them, meet them, let them be. Just watch them. They have a natural half-life, and will fade in their own time. Regard them as happy byproducts of a growing state of peace.


Message from Henry is from our January 13, 2020 Newsletter
Image: Sitting, FreePhotos from Pixabay.com
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