Can’t Meditate? Try Basking

Sep 20, 2020

I’ve been on a tear lately about how important it is to get in a few minutes of meditation every day if we possibly can. And for good reason. It’s the human being’s equivalent to downloading the latest updates. When our mind is quiet, we have no resistance. When we have no resistance, we bob up to a higher vibration. When we vibrate in alignment with our Source, our bodies come gently into alignment too. Healing takes place. Imbalances begin to correct.

But I might not have mentioned quite as often, that there is one thing that gets us aligned just as well as meditation. Basking.

No sun needed...

When most people think basking, they think of the first definition. Bask: lie exposed to warmth and light, typically from the sun, for relaxation and pleasure.

But what I’m referring to here is the second definition. Bask: revel in and make the most of (something pleasing).

To make the most of. Do you know another word that fits nicely with that? Appreciate (definition 2 ): Increase in value.

When we “make the most of” something we increase its value in our perception. We notice something we never noticed fully before. We discover its beauty. From then on, it’s worth more to us than it was before. We’ve made the most of it. We’ve appreciated its value.

Now's a good time...

If there were ever a good time to try to bring the practice of basking, the truest art of appreciation, into our repertoire of habits, it is now. We need to embrace any distraction from the mountains of contrast piling up outside us, in the world at large. We talked about distraction in the previous post.

Basking is something many of us forget to practice at all, we’re so busy in our crazy lives. Stillness is a real challenge. That’s why it’s so hard to meditate. Most of us spend the whole twenty minutes thinking about 100 things that need doing, that aren’t getting done while we’re sitting there breathing.

But basking is easier. It can be faster. And you don’t have to close your eyes. In fact the main difference between basking and meditation is that in meditation, we go inward, close off our physical senses to tune into our spiritual ones. In basking, we do the opposite. We want to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and feel whatever wonderful physical manifestation we’re basking in.

First you have to notice...

Some people don’t think they have anything in their lives worthy of basking in. That’s because you can only see what you are looking for. So look for something to bask in, and you’ll find it. There is so much pleasure to be had in the simplest of things.

I am going from apple tree to apple tree, tasting an apple. They’re pretty sour still. I want to know the personal flavor of each tree. I bask in the way they look right at the end of summer when their leaves are dense and rich, dark green, and the apples bright red polka dots. I bask in them in springtime when the soft pink blossoms send their sweet scent out far and wide. It’s in every breath. I bask in them in winter, when they are bony old crones who contain in their gnarled limbs, the wisdom of the ages, and the secrets of all times.

Sometimes it’s a shape in the clouds, or the call of a bird. I can get so high listening to the brown thrasher in the spring. He has a repertoire of dozens of songs, and he sings each one twice, then switches it up, sounding like a happy dolphin, then like R2D2, then like a crow on helium. It’s a comedy routine, I swear.

But it doesn’t have to be nature either. You can bask in your favorite sweater. Your favorite song. Your favorite food. You can bask in your shower in the morning. You can bask in your car, just feeling so good about having a car. Or a job or a cell phone with the computing power of Apollo-era NASA. Everything is a miracle, when you think about it.

I know there's a lot....

I get it. These are hard times. We are looking straight into the face of the unimaginable and we don’t know if we’re gonna pull up in time. So, naturally, we have to organize, and be aware, and do everything we can for the side of love.

And yet the purpose of our existence is expansion, and expansion is, at its heart, the experience of joy. Stay with me here. Joy is created when we desire something, then move closer to it, then experience it in our lives. When we set a goal and achieve it, in a more earthly vernacular. When our wishes come true. When we achieve something we’ve always dreamed of. That is the very definition of expansion. We wish, we desire, we dream, and in so doing, we create something that wasn’t before, and reality expands.

Now the missing link: Times of difficulty are what spark the strongest desires for the greatest leaps of change.

Change is hard

We are living in the time of a quantum leap in our expansion. A period of intense evolution, extreme, rapid change. It’s been building for a long time, so the bowstring has been pulled back very far. That means it sends the arrow fast and true, but the first part is tough. Going from drawing back, drawing back, drawing back, to flying forward–that instant of change is a rough transition!

But the arrow is moving forward, not backward. Ultimately, love will prevail. Our actions only determine when.

Whatever happens...

It’s important to include joy in our lives. It’s important to embrace the goodness we see around us. As we do, that goodness will grow, and spread. It will calm and heal. It will align us. And we can achieve greater change from a place of alignment than we can from a place of political power anyway.

So spend some time in basking. If we truly appreciate the good things, the warm things, the soft things, the pleasant things that are all around us every day, we will not only have a happier, healthier now, but we’ll help bring even more good things into existence.

Happy basking!

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