I was thinking today that sitting down for meditation is a good excuse for the soul to experience the juicy creativity that is floating around in any present moment. It's a good time to place yourself in a zone where you have zero responsibilities. And in this zone, it feels as if a lightness takes over.

You repeat a mantra, you focus on the breath. You release your thoughts, return to that focus. Bottom line, you are dedicating yourself to the deepest part of your experience that you know how to reach,  and you are sitting still as the ether of creation swirls around your head. And I find it as if you become this kind of conduit that over the minutes becomes more and more, well, conducive.

I sat tonight and I felt my cat sniff my hands, rub against my knee, lie down against my thigh, and purr. I felt it but I practiced not thinking about it, not labeling it, not reacting or responding to it. Just being with him. he's a big, white mini-polar-bear-looking creature and a pacifist. He's also typically aloof, but when I am meditating or focused, he takes delight in getting really close to me--he's attracted to me.

And I think that satwic thoughts are the same way. I think that when you go into this space, this place of meditative practice--whether you are suspended in concentration on the breath for long durations or continuously pulling yourself gently back to it--you become a magnet for creative thoughts, ideas. You create a space, an opening for fresh ideas to come in. And this kind of lasts, after you get up. But you have to repeat it at least daily for it to stay strong.

Through meditation, thoughts are not so much the same as they normally would be. Old patterns of thinking are challenged because, for a sliver of time, they are no longer automatically in control ... and then, guess what, even off the cushion, as you are walking around, they don't have to be in control, either. Aha moments become more like Ahhhaaaaa moments and suddenly we have the power, the space to reframe how we perceive many moments. 

We realize ourselves as the creators just as much as the creatures ... and the fact that the difference between the two is kind of a nuance anyway, isn't it? (Am I a cat's purr? The rain drops that hit my skin from the desert sky at dusk tonight? For a half hour, I could let myself be them and more, just expand and feel it all.)