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Meditative Living

Tom Nissimoff

DEUTSCH

ENGLISH

I remember a dark dusky morning on a small whale-watching boat in the North Sea. It was cold that morning and a bunch of freezing tourists like me sat shivering in the back when the captain spotted some humps off the bow.

Everybody except me rushed forward so that I was heaved up into the air. I didn’t care, I was too cold and tired, didn’t want to meet any sea creatures after all. At that moment, lifted way up, sitting alone in the dark, I turned my head and was looking into an eye the size of a plate that was looking back into mine. A giant black landscape had risen next to me, “standing” in the water, watching me curiously. I heard the mob yelling and screaming, rushing back from the front. The giant’s head was still standing erect – eyeing me. Strong winds and huge waves crashed into the boat.

At that moment I loved that creature. It twinkled smilingly before it glided back into the sea, a huge black tower disappearing vertically into a whirling current. Everyone crowded in next to me – snapping cameras and chattering loudly into cell phones – as we were sucked back again into the dark water. The moment was over. The animal was playing hide-and-seek with us. Some creatures are much more intelligent than we are.

Over a third of the passengers on the Titanic – almost 600 people – could have easily saved themselves in 1912 by just entering the half-empty life boats that were launched into the rough sea. Because of “heroism,” thwarted by chivalry and hierarchy, the gentlemen couldn’t decide who should go first and died. People had time for over an hour to settle these matters. But the “polite heroes” drowned in the cold black sea instead.

We repeat our mistakes over and over like Phil Connors, the protagonist weatherman in the movie “Groundhog Day,” in which his character transforms by re-living the same day over and over again. (Connors is always Connors, just his character changes from a cynical to a caring human being). Apparently the human race needs some thousands of years for this metamorphosis to take place.

We assume we are the driver of our life-car. We are not. We don’t know that awareness bereft of any criticism or judgement is watching us all along, sitting next to us in the passenger’s seat. All it takes is a first little step of awakening for us to find out that we are not sitting in the driver’s seat. We are not the driver but more probably his friendly companion called awareness, sitting right next to him –watching, doing nothing, innocently enjoying the bumpy ride. It doesn’t really matter from where we started and where we are heading. It’s enough to realize, “We are not driving this vehicle. We are really being driven by an unknown power.” Where it takes us, the driver and his best friend called awareness, we don’t know. It is not of any importance.

It’s only when we switch positions – we as awareness moving into the driver’s seat and our personality, character becoming the inconspicuous passenger – that the ride begins to transform. We realize we had been driving on autopilot all along.

THE RIDE