What did you learn about yourself yesterday?

Yesterday I attended an all-day silent mindfulness meditation retreat. We practiced various forms of meditation over a 7-hour period. I've been practicing mindfulness meditation for about two years. It's an extraordinary experience to be in this exploration of inner space.

Yesterday I got a deeper knowing that all my answers lie within. It sounds so trite and unremarkable, but the experience for me was profound. Several areas that I've been grappling with have been causing anxiety in the uncertainty of their outcome. Areas that I've felt powerless to impact, having to do with loved ones and external situations that seem beyond my control.

I have ringing in my ears, and it's been interesting that in going within, I directly confront this sound. Often I find myself wishing that it would just "go away". Yesterday the ringing occurred differently for me. I approached it with curiousity, with friendliness. I was deeply present to it in a new way. I saw that there is something for me to understand and realize about myself. Perhaps a message, a communication. And that the answers lie within.

I have been coming up against a teaching everywhere I turn lately, the message to "choose your life, all of it, just the way it is and just the way it isn't." This is expressed in Byron Katie's book "Loving What Is". It's the central theme of Eckhart Tolle's teaching on non-resistance. As Rainer Maria Rilke said,

"What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, that hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are."

Yesterday I experienced my capacity to context the difficult as beautiful. It was a gift!