Colours of my meditation

When I walk along the river, I make up names of the colours of the sky and of the river. I often recite the colours aloud to my husband: River city steel-grey blue; Freshly laid cement grey; Cottage on the Lake vintage shutter white; Sparking turquoise gemstone blue; Old driveway past its day, pot-holed grey. Today, my love, is a River city steel-grey blue kind of day, I would announce.

My husband is never very impressed; to date he has not contacted Sherwin-Williams.

What I didn’t confess to him was that I have assigned new colours to things since I was a kid. I can’t help myself.

So you can imagine how I feel (like I have come home) ever since I took up watercolour painting. My morning and evening rituals of watching the dawn skies (and later the sun sets) have me running for the paint palette – all new colours to me. (I swear: If heaven mirrors our thoughts – I am looking forward to skies of alizarin crimsons, cadmium yellows, and ultramarine blues when I die. And note to God: Please throw in a little yellow ochre and raw sienna, for no other reason than…I love those colours!)

Even my meditation and mindfulness practices have deepened – in living technicolour palettes. My mind wanders during meditation: I hear a bird trill and instead of labelling it – sparrow, junco, robin, cardinal – I assign it a colour. The lowly house sparrow is labelled in shades of raw sienna (oh, come on, my favourite colour), a mix of alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue, with just a touch of yellow. Umber, that is. Not too much, or my brown mixture will be the colour of mud.

Once I recognize that I am painting  the bird sounds that are interrupting my meditation, I re-focus on my breath.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Expansion. Release.

It’s so obvious that I am thinking about paint colours and mixtures again. (Blame the birds. They are a chirpin’.)

Breathe in. Breathe out. Expansion. Release.

Because watercolours give me such pleasure (even pronouncing the colours in my head delights me), I find that instead of chastising myself for the numerous round trips that my mind has taken during my meditations, I find myself smiling. Colours just make me happy. And so does meditation. Meditation allows me to access my inner spirit – and my inner spirit is turning cartwheels (I’m fairly certain of this).

I will chalk up my mind’s wanderings to beginner’s mind – one of curiosity and attention. Thankfully, I think my beginner’s mind (thanks to learning a new art) is the opposite of my usual state. That is, I’ve become acutely aware that my mind’s tendency is to label things: Those bare branches look like tangles and plaques of a mind affected by Alzheimer’s disease; that tree mirrors Quan Yin (the statue of compassion); that person resembles Hercule Poirot (the famous Belgium detective of Agatha Christie books); the dog who lives next door is barking madly again – he must have seen a falling leaf. (Ah, judgment of the dog. He barks at everything.)

Oh, the state of beginner’s mind – an open, curiosity to life’s present moments – hasn’t cured me of the habitual 24/7 narration of attaching colours to everything, nor has it cured me of labelling my perceptions. Rather, beginner’s mind has allowed me acceptance of my thoughts, my narrations, my desire to see life in a technicolour, dream coat palette.

And acceptance, I have learned, is key. It is key to a healthy self-awareness, and a healthy self-awareness helps us navigate this journey.

Beginner’s mind (like a child’s mind) reminds me to pay attention to this moment – attention to the breath during meditation (as a touchstone) and attention to our sensations, feelings, and emotions. We miss the point of meditation or mindfulness if we do not realize its’ greatest gifts: attention, awareness, and acceptance (the three A’s).

And by acceptance, I mean that we embrace our mind’s wanderings, judgments, labelling, and stories. During meditation, we note our mind’s wanderings, and then gently bring our attention back to the breath.

Instead of chastising ourselves and becoming frustrated with the meditation session, attaching blame to the session or becoming frustrated with ourselves, we smile (Thich Nhat Hanh) and return to the breath.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Umbra yellow. Ultramarine blue. If I mix the two colours, will I create a vibrant green? Or turquoise?

Colours again.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I smile.