Godzilla Versus Meditation

(or 'How to Live a Spiritual Life when there’s good shit on at the cinema')

Sometimes the choices you want to make boil down to the ridiculous. A while ago now, I found myself wrestling with a choice of either going to see Godzilla at the cinema, or going to my meditation class. On that occasion, Godzilla won! Proving that sometimes options can be fun – and that the monkey mind will always find reasons *not* to meditate! Always! And, sometimes you can find that you’re standing at a crossroads and although the path to take seems obvious, there is still so much comfort from reliving old stories of who we are, whether these stories serve us or not. No matter how beautiful the meditation has been (which usually leads to my trying to cling on to that beauty). Sometimes, Godzilla wins. And maybe that’s OK – because meditation cannot be clung to. It’s the moments where you sit without expectation, where you can truly let go, where you will find what you need.

I can see the challenge in your eyes – and the tiredness. 'How do you live a spiritual existence,' you begin and gesture round, helplessly, 'when we live in this madness, this world of chaos, where death can strike without notice and sorrow is often intermingled with happiness; where the media and money are our new Gods and nightclubs are neon, plastic, places of worship. Where mankind keeps repeating the same old patterns of warfare and drama. Where some people are so caught up in pain that they can see no end. Where ego is king, and Trump is leader of the USA. Where on Earth do we begin?'

We simply begin where we are. There is no magic that need to be conjured. We don’t need to wait for life to be perfect. We can’t wait for our leaders to be ethical and the madness to stop. We just begin where we find ourselves. Leaders will continue to be idiots. We will be driven to the brink of madness and back again. The madness can never stop, when ego is king. Unless we have total nuclear disarmament, perceived threats to the ego will only cause the weapons to get bigger, with more ridiculous swagger – we’ve written defcon 1 into our collective DNA, time and time again (but love is on our side, and life is more than this physical body.  And love has already won).

 We can only watch as the Farage and Theresa May and Donald Trump all jostle for attention; as idiotic machinations become more ingrained; as the forest of thorns becomes ever more impenetrable. As religious people act without God present. (We can march, and sign petitions, but we can only do what we can do. After that, there are only the choices that you have, and the thoughts that inspire those choices and the art of life, because who you are is a series of choices, and who you want to be is built from your thoughts, and when external life is hard, you have your inner resources -- always -- to softly guide you home.)

 If you stand still and listen, you might hear your ancestors calling you.  Perhaps they're telling you to stand tall and dream your best version of yourself into being, because even though, like all of us, you’re imperfect and cracked, you're still beautiful. Every action starts with a single thought; all you can be is all that you are in any given moment. So long as you do your best, that’s more than enough. And when you're weary, and feel small and cold and alone in the splendour of the universe and the insanity of this world -- please know that you're never alone, they are always with you.  Sometimes the answers are not what you'd expect.  Sometimes the answers lie beyond conscious thought and are hinted at in dreams.  Sometimes the answers are something left-field and require only a willingness to participate, no matter how illogical.  The faith is the heartbeat within you, the ancestral call is your call, because you've been here before, my friend.  Perhaps many times.  You know these shores, you've felt this pain before.  You've born witness to the miraculous, the just and unjust; unfurling flowers and the truth from a pure mountain stream.

And sometimes.  Just sometimes, the answer is Godzilla.