Of Glaciers and Chess Games
Expanding Paradigms - Spring 2001

Anything can be elevated to the level of meditation when the goal is not the finished product, but instead to be fully immersed in the process. You can meditate upon washing dishes, walking, chanting, or the flow of thoughts through your mind.

One of my favorites is a writing meditation. Record your thoughts without editing, filtering, or judgeing. Keep the pen moving, if only to write about how you have nothing to write about. This exercise eventually slows the mind down to the rhythm of the pen and from this slower rhythm our unconscious mind is able to occassionally break through to the surface, surprizing and delighting us.

This is a wonderful exercise in letting go of control. When you are finished you have a written record of your meditation, that can be revisited at a later date.

Below is a fun little peice that I wrote several years ago at my first Mexico Mind/Body Writing Retreat. I had tried several times to write with out editing or judging, but was easily distracted by thoughts like Ôthis does not make any senseÕ, or worrying about switching tenses in mid sentence. My intellect would take over and I would end up writing a peice that was grammatically correct, and made perfect sense, but was uninspiring. This time however, when I realized that I was writing nonsense, and later when I suddenly changed directions without warning, I was able to surrender to the flow of words and not let my ego take over. I wrote with abandon and actually enjoyed the process!

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I watch the glacier closely, convinced that watching long enough I will see it move. I know that this is a contest of wills, and blinking I will be presented with an accomplished fact. Glaciers do not flow, they jump from one small quantum state to another, if only we look closely enough. They prefer to do this unobserved, and scientists returning each day measure their slow progress down the valley and are satisfied to imagine that they flow, but I know better. The scientists blink and the glacier seizes the opportunity to reposition itself more comfortably on it's bed of rocky moraine.

This is a test of will, mine and the glacier's. If only I do not blink, the glazier will be forced to reveal its will to action. I can feel the glacier, increasingly uncomfortable, longing for relief, but too proud to reveal its true nature to mortal man. It whispers softly to me, to abandon my silly quest, that humans come and go and glaciers remain. My eyelids grow heavy but I shake off the trance. I know it is growing desperate. I can feel its creaking ice and hear the ache of its fissures. I imagine how powerful I will be, how triumphant, exultant, conqueror of glaciers, and smile wistfully. The glacier feels my resolve and groans under its own weight.

I am 9 years old, sitting across a 3 foot high African wooden drum from my father, already an old man. We are playing chess and I am winning. He whistles uneasily, discordant whistling that ofttimes jarred opponents into mistakes.

I have been here before, perched on the edge of victory and let him slip through my fingers and dance away only to return, driving hard into an exposed flank, or sit back to pick off neglected pieces one at a time and always... always I had lost. But not this time!

He grins mischievously at me, proud and embarrassed at the same time, as I press the attack carefully. He desperately throws out bait to distract me with an easy kill and I pass it by, taking my time, closing relentlessly for the kill. His last option closed, he looks into my eyes confirming that I too see it and will not be swayed... and tilts over his king in formal resignation...

I am shocked to find mixed with the pleasure of victory my first taste of mortality. The world just lost a little of its magic and I am older and I see clearly that my father just grew older too. Neither of us celebrate. My father and his youngest child are closer now than ever, the pedestal removed, the harsh reality of life, of competition, of predation lay exposed between us, recorded in the patterns of the board for any trained eye to read.

I am not yet ready. I still need to believe in something larger than myself. I still need the magic of mystery. And so I blink, slowly and deliberately - and the glacier sighs and for today at least remains a mystery to me. Namaste'