When I wrote the "Sometimes life hurts" blog post, that was when I got side-swiped by an emotional panic that I had not experienced when I was a monk or even since.
What happened is that I woke up to find that most of my money was gone from my bank account. Poof. Just vanished. Money that I was very much counting on.
All the additional fragile and shady circumstances surrounding it convinced me to bite fully and deeply into the negative, emotional story in such a way that I lost my peace, something that I thought couldn't happen.
My mind was spinning nauseatingly and my body was contracting painfully. No rationality, no intelligent problem solving, no stillness, no "me". I hadn't experienced this in a long time.
Fortunately, I eventually sorted it out with the bank.
Yet for one day, the dive into my negative emotions etched the event more painfully into my psyche than it was in actuality. The pain was horrible!
The point of the essay is twofold: that the stillness of the Infinite can rescue us no matter how far gone we feel–this I know for certain.
And secondly, being a meditator doesn't mean you won't ever get caught off guard by something unusual. But it does mean you get to choose how long you suffer.
By nightfall of the event, and after meditating with complete dedication, I was back to my rock-solid inner peace. If someone saw me before and after, they would've shaken their head in disbelief.
Meditation is such a priceless gift and you never know when you'll need it to rescue you.
Yes, even for former monks.
