Meditation Insight

A short note here (possibly related to the previous post): Something happened to me this morning during meditation….

For the past 3 Sundays, I’ve been gathering at the dharma center in my neighborhood for meditation. As a 9-year practitioner of yoga, I’ve always been drawn to meditation, and there have been stretches of time where I’ve had a consistent practice. As part of my New Year’s resolution to “PLAY,” I’m trying to get back into the groove–the ever playful groove–of a consistent meditation practice. So, I’ve been going to the dharma center on Sunday mornings.

This morning I did not feel well. I felt groggy, tired, sad, and my eyeballs literally ached. Meditation was my salve and I comfortably slipped into contemplation, probing my sadness and my crankiness. And then something happened: I got an idea.

This idea crept up my spine and made the hairs on my neck stand at attention. Then idea seized my whole body, inside and out. Write a book about education, it said. Take everything you know, every experience you’ve had and pull them together. Take the knowledge from your M.A.T. program. Take your 5 years in the technology industry. Take the books you’ve read–Punished by Rewards, Me 2.0, The World is Flat, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, etc. Take your experiences teaching–teaching theater to children in hospitals, teaching yoga to teens and adults, teaching literature and writing at the high school and college levels. Take your experiences in nature. Take what you know and what the world needs and write about about how education, at every level, needs to change to meet the urgent global demands of the 21st century.

This insight lightened my heart. I savored this insight. Then meditation ended, and I went home.

And then the doubt sunk in.