While eating at retreat at Kripalu Center for yoga and Health I was working with the suggested instructions for conscious eating and I was doing fine for a while. I started with a meditation on food and the body and thankfulness and proceeded to look at the detail of the food and then the aroma. I placed a very tiny bit to my lips and rolled the morsel around inside of my mouth feeling the texture and shape with my tongue and gently tapping very lightly with my teeth. An explosion of taste jumped out from the morsel and my tongue said WOW. I continued to move the morsel around and gently chewed as the flavor reach a crescendo and then lapsed into swallowing and I started to place another bit of food into my mouth. The slowness of the first morsel was replaced by a still slow but not as detailed chewing, tasting and swallowing. I found that to receive as much flavor as my tongue and mouth now had grown accustomed to I needed to chew a little faster. After a few moments I found myself almost galloping in chewing and reloading with the thought of conscious eating receded to being miles away. I immediately recalled the breath and as I focused on the in-breath I started over again with the conscious eating. I found a medium pace were I could maintain consciousness of eating and still release enough taste so that I was content with the flavor. I found a pace that allowed conscious awareness and focus on the breath along with a sense of happiness and mindfulness. I then remembered that I had planned to be somewhere and I still had not finished eating. I recalled a related instruction that said we could walk as fast as we wanted to and still do a walking meditation with awareness so I started to chew very fast at a gallop but now I was able to stay with the consciousness of fast eating.
Later that day I was outside on a hiking trail covered with snow and ice and sloping downward. When I got down to the level ground and was no longer concerned with the slipperiness of the hill I started walking briskly along until I realized that I was rushing to finish the walk like the galloping of the food. Again my awareness of the breath kicked in and I consciously slowed down and stopped the rush. I slipped into a space of awareness and mindfulness and started to walk slowly . The shift of awareness was into the now, rather than into the end result. It was an awareness of the doing and being and nowness. What I had let go of was the wanting to be doing the walking as an exercise, as a meditation, as a picture gathering, as a find a sight to transfer me into another state of mind, as a getting to go around the path as a wanting for the walking to be something other than just walking.
Well, at this point the wanting for the walk to be producing something stopped. Immediately as I was aware of returning to the breath awareness I would feel as though I was in a siting meditation. I found that I could now walk slowly without any wanting . I was now just walking and breathing or maybe just breathing. The slowness was now able to speed up a bit without changing the non-wanting. I was free and walkbreathinglookingfeeling all as one in mindfulness.
I have become aware of rushing while doing many things, taking a shower, eating breakfast, trimming a denture, and I have consciously stopped in the middle and given myself 10 seconds or so to just do whatever I am rushing with to finish. Then there is an immediate shift to a very slow reallllllllly slow movement of whatever it is that I am doing so that I practically stop. And the sense of wanting leaves and I become more aware of what and where I am. Gradually I can speed up again but my awareness has shifted along with awareness of my breath.
Spiritual Gravity 