I began with an image of a box. The box represented the background of emptiness. In one side of the box was a small hole. Through that hole something—maybe one thing, maybe everything—pops through and becomes manifest as the ten thousand things.
Around half the box I drew a circle with an arrow branching off, showing that whatever appears is constantly moving, constantly flowing.
During meditation I remembered the instruction to form a mudra with my hands and let the thumbs touch. The instruction was simply to keep awareness on the mudra and notice that it remains. The mudra became a kind of attention anchor. I could feel the physical sensation of the thumbs touching. At one point the circle of my thumbs narrowed a little. I noticed it and simply returned it.
The breath became another mudra—another thing to watch.
Then I remembered my ring. Not waiting for a bell to ring, but the ring on my hand. My wedding ring is like a small mindfulness reminder. I usually only take it off when playing ball, and I like to put it right back on. It’s another physical reminder that is just there.
Then I wrote down mask—the different masks of the self. The self is a kind of mask box containing many masks we wear.
From there my attention moved to the metaphor we had been discussing yesterday: shock absorbers and springs.
Normally experience passes through layers—physical sensation, emotion, interpretation, habit, karma. These layers act like springs and shock absorbers in a vehicle. The spring takes the hit and bounces. The shock absorber tones down the bounce.
But lately it has felt like those shock absorbers are wearing out. The filters are thinner. Experience arrives more directly—rawer.
It’s like riding in an old wagon with wooden wheels and no springs. Every bump in the road travels straight from the wheel into the carriage.
Direct experience.
Then another image came: a cup of life with cream and two sugars.
When I was a kid I drank coffee with cream and two sugars. It tasted good. One day my dad said, “Why don’t you drink black coffee and drink it like a man?”
He didn’t say many things like that, but when he did they carried weight. A small sentence that expanded into a big picture.
So I started drinking black coffee.
At first it was the idea of it that stayed in my mind. But after a while I realized I actually liked it.
Black coffee.
These days sometimes I add a little honey in the morning. If I drink coffee later in the day, it’s usually black again.
And somewhere in that small shift—from cream and sugar to black—there’s another metaphor for meditation.
Less filtering.
More direct taste.
The raw flavor of the cup.
Reflection:
How do you drink your coffee?
What do you take straight, and what do you always soften?
It doesn’t have to be coffee—what in your life do you experience unfiltered, and what do you always dress up first?
Spiritual Gravity 