Tolerance is not one of most people's favorite words.
To tolerate something is to endure it--to sit through a boring performance--or
hang in there through ten days of an antibiotic that wrecks your digestive
system.
In awareness practice, however, tolerance is a beautiful thing.
It's a growing ability to see, to recognize, to accept and to work with things
as they are (in contrast to how we wish or perhaps fear they were). The more we
cultivate and appreciate tolerance, the more the quality of our AWARENESS
expands and deepens.
At some point, we begin to understand why Rumi, when he finds a
'pack of sorrows' on his porch, 'meets them at the door laughing!'
But first we have dues to pay, work to do, a soul to stretch.
If you're a beginning meditator--or someone who can't yet quite
imagine EVER doing meditation--perhaps first you'll grapple with the antsy-ness
of sitting still, of being bored. Or the disappointment of discovering how
random and petty and unfamiliar human brains can be--especially our own!
If you're an intermediate meditator, you've surely already come to
experience many things knocking at your door that have seemed intolerable. Some
of those things you've tolerated, made room for, welcomed. Some of those
things, well, maybe not yet.
Mary Oliver, in The Summer Day, writes:
I
don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I
do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into
the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how
to be idle and blessed...
We're not used to being 'idle' and being 'blessed.'
We're so much more accustomed to being idle and being bored--or feeling guilty.
And we're not inclined to tolerate boredom or guilt.
Tolerance, in mindful practices, is the art of being
idle and being blessed. Literally, we begin to cultivate this very thing,
allowing the mind to idle, to be in neutral like a car's transmission, letting
the world come to us--the world of thoughts, images, sensations and feelings.
In formal meditation, it's OUR thoughts and images and
sensations and feelings. Out and about it's OTHER PEOPLE'S thoughts and
feelings, words and actions, we learn to 'tolerate'--to receive neutrally, to
welcome, even to bless.
It's really helpful, right at the start, to realize
that in cultivating tolerance we're engaged in re-wiring our brains, developing
a fresh and marvelous new skill.
Sometimes tolerance will bloom into a mindset that
just naturally meets a pack of sorrows at the door laughing. At some point the
practice of mindful tolerance will feel like a stroll in a meadow, collapsing
in the grass, noticing and savoring flowers and grasshoppers and spider webs.
Ah, the blessedness of 'idling' and being blessed.
At other times, in good faith we'll try to tolerate,
make room for stuff that scares the hell out of us--or leads to painful sorrows
or long-smoldering rage. Etcetera. Etcetera!
These times will feel nothing like a stroll in a
meadow. How strange that TIOLERANCE, that heretofore drab word, would be one of
the main portals to Life's Grand Adventure.
Slow down, friends. Be idle and be blessed. Welcome
whatever comes.
And hold on!
