What if meditation isn’t about stopping the storm, but discovering the eye of the storm?

A hurricane is enormous movement—wind, rain, clouds, waves—all swirling around its eye.

But the eye is moving too. The whole hurricane travels, and the eye travels with it. Yet compared with the swirling movement around it, the eye is remarkably still.

Maybe stillness isn’t the absence of movement.

Maybe stillness is the absence of being carried along by the movement.

That makes me wonder about the sense of self.

There seems to be a “me” at the center of everything that happens. But thoughts, feelings, sensations, and circumstances are all things that happen. The sense of “me” seems different—as though it is the place from which all of it is being experienced.

Now imagine you’re in a boat and a hurricane is approaching.

You can stay where you are and let the storm gradually reach you. You may be tossed around for a long time before the eye arrives.

Or you can turn the boat toward the eye.

You encounter the strongest turbulence sooner, but you also reach the calm sooner.

You shorten the time you’re being tossed around by the storm.

The same thing may happen with irritation.

Instead of resisting it, escaping it, or getting lost in the story about it, turn toward the actual experience.

Feel it.

Where is it in the body?

What does it actually feel like?

The turbulence may become stronger for a moment. But you’re moving through it rather than being carried around by it.

Sometimes the quickest way through the storm is to turn toward it.

And when you reach the center, the storm doesn’t have to stop.

Thoughts can continue.

Feelings can continue.

Life can continue.

Yet there can be stillness.

And perhaps something else becomes apparent there:

Happiness.

Not happiness we create or earn.

Perhaps happiness was already there, at the center of the storm.