Here’s a short Meditation Jeff sometimes mentions when teaching his “What Meditation Isn’t” class at the resort’s wellness center. Meditation is not necessarily a solo pursuit nor is it without imagination. It can begin with a walk and fallen leaf:
During one of our walks near our cottage on Lake Winnipeg, Joan picked-up a yellow poplar leaf. We spoke of the significance of the leaf, we imagined its experience and what it might teach us.
This leaf, which had dropped from its tree is as each of us. If we identify as the leaf, we are done when we are no longer participating in the life force of the tree. If we identify as limb, then we are far from finished, until that limb is broken in a storm. If we identify as the whole tree, we might expect to experience a life of 75 to some 200 years depending on our species. However, if rather than a single leaf, we identify with the poplar species rather than the single tree, which might be consumed by a fire from a lightning strike, we have a life expectancy of millions of years. If we as a species identify with life itself, our life expectancy is beyond time and therefore, infinite. This is the meditation on a poplar leaf.