Mindfulness – How to row your boat…

I was taken hold of one day by a nostalgic memory of a week’s rest near the far end of Loch Alsh, a peaceful, tidal sea inlet close by the Isle of Skye in Scotland. A rowing boat came with the cottage. The tidal rhythm of high to low over six hours and twelve and a half minutes slows the pace of city life to a contemplative bliss. The greatest dilemma is to guestimate when to push the boat out.

There was an island not far off the shore, small and wooded, ideal to circle and perhaps to land, if the mood was such, or to float by watching for nature to stir when the silence of gentle rowing and resting allowed casual observation. It was in this frame of mind, participating in nature with the hills around, that navigating the rowing boat became incorporated into my way of being. You see, when pulling gently on both oars dipping into the smooth waters with my feet planted to offer equal and opposite force to the oar blades in that fluidity, it is not possible to see where I am heading. I can only see where I have been.

Remaining always in this orientation to the past, no matter how beautiful and captivating, is bound to run into an obstruction some time or another. It is best to avoid such shocks. This can be achieved by the simple commitment to take an occasional pause, in which to reassess one’s place in life’s gentle passing of time and space and substantial experience.

While rowing one’s boat, this usually involves looking around, especially over one’s shoulder towards the bow or prow of my boat (depending upon its design and attitude to life), and beyond. The context of life is awesome. It is unending; although light can hide its extremities. I am, at heart, the sky at night on a clear night. Light and radio frequencies can fill our nerves instead with their own presence, as if that were all there is. But gravity moves the tides and keeps my feet on the ground and in the boat; and the sun’s warmth makes life all around and within me grow together, in a unison that I cannot see with my eyes.

In that pause, it is as well to make an assessment and to memorise it, where I would like to go. It may not matter, provided I avoid various potential catastrophes. But if I can make a decision like that, at least as a temporary way ‘forward’, then all the other features of orientation fall into their places relative to it. I can spot a feature of the land, or a mooring buoy, that is 180 degrees opposite to my future, and keep that in the centre of my view of the receding past as a guiding purpose to equalise my pull on each of the two oars when I resume rowing, and to the twist of the oars in my hands that adjust the blades in relation to the centre of the earth.

In a moment of distraction from this truly living state, I may disruptively recall some unfortunately emotive events from my city life. I recall my despair on seeing how mindfulness is being taught in schools and workplaces as a pause from daily activity, for calming (!), using techniques as if they are the fact. “The evidence is that performance improves when people use mindfulness.” …I must not scream… I must retain my sensitivity to the slightest of breezes that ripples the loch’s surface from the hills, which could influence my return. And return, I must.

I had not mentioned, I believe, that this week’s rest from the city included some living relationships. It is so dream-like, to pull gently on the oars and glide through still waters and realize the bonds we have with all and in all, and all in me and I WITHIN – belonging together. My wife Marian and I had come away from near Plymouth to this place of retreat with our two small children aged nearly three, and nine months. I had left behind my single-handed NHS general medical practice for a week, and Marian, mainly managing the severe colic that was our young-uns lived experiential world, brought her practice with us. As we had driven down Glen Coe, a lone piper had stood on an outcrop by the road, and inside the car it had sounded much the same from our loved ones.

Mindfulness is bringing these two states of being together. I believe it is called love. Intelligent love is orientated and peace-filled because of its orientation, not because it has first aimed for tranquillity. To aim for tranquillity misses the boat.

On one of my rowing ‘expeditions’ to the island, my elder daughter had been in the rowing boat stern. In that frame of time, she was the guiding light and attraction and warmth in my life. This relationship in the now, as any relationship in the now, reverses the mindful orientation of life. I was looking over my shoulder to orientate how best to keep her safe and excited in her exploration of the loch’s island – of her life. That is a conversational orientation in life. That is conversational consciousness.