The Snowball

   When I was a kid, I used to marvel at these glass snowballs: the kind you find at Christmas time where you shake the ball and all the snowflakes kind of disperse over time. As I mentioned to the group practitioners tonight after meditation, grown adults often don't like the idea of dispersal, or of being in an 'unsettled' state. But I sometimes wonder if perhaps one can see the state of being unsettled as similar to a Christmas snowball: not good and not bad either, just the debris floating in all directions until it finally settles. Can one confidently face the world in this same way?
    There are often times in my life when things seem unsettled because of changes, including changes in the workplace. But I often reflect on how this state of change eventually turns into something else: the snowflakes never do stay up in the air or in water forever. Yet when something unsettling happens, I often assume that this unsettled state is permanent unless I do something about it. More often than not, I am not really in control of the situation that's changing, and all I can do is respond to the fraction of it where I have some degree of assurance. But when there is a mass upheaval in a company or department, there isn't that much that a single person can change. In those cases, 'watching the snow settle' might be the only source of repose one has. But why not simply enjoy the state  of being unsettled? Why wait for settling to occur?
    To be clear, there seem to be two kinds of 'settled'' in meditation practice. One seems to be the one that we are always seeking, when we say, "I just want to settle down and put down my thoughts." This wish to settle seems to arise from a desire that things happen a certain way. But there is a more subtle kind of settling: that is the kind where mind is no longer perturbed by moving objects or the chaotic mess of snowflakes. In fact, mind doesn't even label these things as chaotic/still, hot/cold, this or that. Rather, the phenomena is okay because the mind is settled in its own nature. This is not the kind of settling that is waiting for phenomena to behave in a prescribed way, but it's the settling that comes from a full acceptance even when things appear not to have a prescribed order or predictability.
   I think that this latter practice is extremely difficult, but actually, it seems to be a key part of meditation. When I am not desiring things to be better, or more pristine, I can see a mind that doesn't pick or choose, or make distinctions between warring categories. This mind can't help but be settled, yet it is beyond even the distinction of settled/unsettled.