Total Eclipse of the Mind

The solar eclipse prompted many spectacular conversations and observations. Here are two of my favorites:

1. "This is a once in a lifetime experience." So true. Total eclipses don't happen often, let alone ones in the heart of the United States.

2. "You can see the sun (corona) as you never get to see it." Again, true! A new a different perspective!

What's equally as interesting are how those two statements apply to every day life.

You are living a once in a lifetime experience in this very moment, and in the next meal you have, and next car ride you take, and next time you look out the window at what seems like an ordinary day. Every moment of our lives is uniquely fingerprinted, immediately rising and passing, and equally deserving of the same intense focus that we spent on the eclipse. This kind of focus on your present experience is called mindfulness. So, in a way, the eclipse brought about a big beautiful moment of collective mindfulness.

And on the other side of that coin is seeing something differently. By putting a celestial body between ourselves and the sun, we gained a new perspective. I think that's what meditation does - it puts a new perspective on your life and consciousness, and lets you see the "corona of your mind." That's not a real term, but it gets to the idea of what meditation and mindfulness help us with: seeing the jagged edges.

As you might have guessed, I've been meditating. For over 60 consecutive days now! What is it like? How am I different?

It's always hard for people to articulate these things. But I'll try.

Imagine a time in your life that is somewhat special but not overwhelmingly emotional. Maybe it was a time in high school, or the first day on a new job, or the last day of *something*. There is a tinge of nostalgia to this memory, maybe you remember how simple things were then compared to now, or how naive you were about what was to come.

But now imagine being able to go back to that time, to just get to witness yourself in those moments as a sort of ghost or guardian angel. You already know the beautiful moments, the scary moments, the boring moments - you know that the "you" are watching will turn out fine and make it to this moment in the future known as "now." When I think of this, I think of how fondly and intently I would watch, loving that naive me.

Now, with that mindset fixed on your past self, just shift it to the present. Look on your present self fondly. Look on your present experience as one in which you are the ghost, in which you have no real ability to stop events from happening, and that you get to just watch and record the experience (like watching the eclipse). But it's not a detached experience - in many ways, it's a much deeper experience, in that you're more intently watching, more closely experiencing. And in the present moment, you are loving it all, even the "bad" experiences, because you're simply looking upon them just as you would be looking upon a memory of yourself in high school.

Viktor Frankl said it a little more concisely: "Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"