Photo © Martha Brettschneider / Damselwings Photography
Our morning meditation community reconvenes on Monday, August 17, at 7:00 am ET on Zoom for our flagship 30-Day Mindfulness Meditation Challenge. We’d love to have you join us! Learn more and register here.
I just returned from a short but sweet visit with my son in Colorado. We camped for a night in the Rockies, outside of Vail.
“Just” one night. “Just” one morning meditation in nature. “Just” a few photos snapped afterwards.
As is so often the case with me, I didn’t think I had used my camera well enough to create anything interesting. I didn’t even bother to check them on the camera.
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t feeling great that morning. The first night at altitude is always a little rough, plus my allergies went haywire from the super dry and dusty environment. I took an allergy pill at about 2 am that left me groggy most of the next day.
Meditation is so ingrained in my morning routine that it takes a lot for me to skip it. Skipping it feels very much like not brushing my teeth. So when my body woke me that morning with an altitude headache and congested sinuses, I had to ask it – what would really be of service to you?
“Meditation, please!” bubbled up immediately.
But then another voice came in that said, “Maybe you should sleep more instead.”
The pull toward wakeful stillness won out. I was too congested to fall back asleep anyway. I also remembered that my Oura ring reads meditation sessions as sleep. But the choice had already been made before I found those reasons to back it up. So I tiptoed away from our campsite just before sunrise and nestled into a spot flanked by a grove of young aspen trees.
I closed my eyes and surrendered to the sensory experience of being held by the mountain’s energy. Gratitude flowed through me, creating space around the physical discomforts I woke with, eventually dissolving them. I sent out my thanks to the Universe for the opportunity to experience the dawn of that new day in the company of the more-than-human world.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was just breaking over the horizon. I snapped a few frames without much thought, only coming back to them a couple of days later. It was only then that I noticed what the lens had caught that I’d missed with my own eyes.
Though the sunburst effect was intentional, the lens flare you see in the photograph — that string of color and rainbow bubbles — wasn’t planned. But what some might call a technical imperfection feels like a little bit of magic to me.
Those flares are the perfect illustration of the energy that meditation sparks. I didn’t see them when I pressed the shutter. They only showed up once I looked closer, later. That’s how our practice tends to work too. It generates energy for ourselves as a starting point, and that energy spreads to others when we live with presence and intention, often in ways we never witness firsthand: a kinder reply, a steadier conversation, a ripple that moves on without us.
Practicing in community provides an extra boost to those energetic benefits. The presence each of us brings amplifies what everyone else is generating, in ways that are as hard to see in the moment as a lens flare, and just as real.
We’d love to welcome you to the circle on Monday, August 17. All skill levels are welcome! Register here.
