Given all the emotions of the day, it was hard to tell where my nerves were coming from. As I took a deep in-breath, signing off one Zoom call, and immediately signed into a new Zoom call with a deep out-breath, I was calm and excited.
One by one faces appeared until 14 coworkers sat with me, patiently waiting, expectant of a 15-minute zen break in the middle of their “hump” day. And not just any hump day: Inauguration Day.
1-2-3 all eyes on me.
The smallest atom of what Amanda Gorman must have felt earlier that day. And yet, the universal feeling of doing a first: “something you’ve never done before.”
Leading my first meditation sitting—a discipline I had only started practicing daily in the past few weeks. Just the beginning.
But was it?
Perhaps the beginning of my practice, yet a discipline sprinkled throughout my personal development journey over the past 15 years.
I took a deep in-breath, drawing in all that had lead to this moment, and then released my fear to the universe, with a deep out-breath.
“As you settle into this moment, simply focus on being in your body. This is the only place you need to be. This is presence.”
Just as I had practiced a few days before on my own, we began with a reading from Julia Cameron’s Heart Steps: Prayers and Declarations for a Creative Life:
My true nature is the experience of unity. All separation is fear. All fear is illusion. We forget that we are one…In our unity, we are one people, one earth, one song. Each of us sings a True Note.
We were not synchronized. We were not identical. We were 15 different bodies sitting in our own posture, with our own breaths, with our own sensations, feelings, thoughts. In 15 different places.
And yet, we were one. All focused on the same goal: being present together.
Just as so many millions had sat hours before mesmerized by the poetry of the day. The start of the next era. A new beginning.
But was it?
As if there was a giant switch that simply needed to be flipped. On or off. Ending to beginning. Old to new. Release to receive.
As if transformation happens like that. Instead of a slow fade like a light dimmer. Or better yet like the sun—in constant rotation and degree of brightness.
The 15-minute sitting came to an end.
Together, we took a deep in-breath of accomplishment and then a deep out-breath of humility.
Present in the process.
May you stay the course in your evolution this week.
Love,
Jules
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