Joh’s Journal

How James Taylor and a young broadway actor

brought me back home.

I'd had one of those mornings, in fact one of those weeks, where I intend to “get things done” but nothing much happens. I do enough to get by, in fact if I count my completed tasks the number is not bad, but I have little sense of achievement. I get through each task but a mountain of others await. It goes like that.

This sense of being on autopilot, that is, no one is flying the plane but yet the plane lands, is very familiar to me.  

Back to this particular morning. I was scrolling through Instagram while thinking, “I must get back to my list”, when I came across a  T Magazine post. The post is a video of a young Broadway actor talking about the first time he heard his favorite song, Fire and Rain. He describes being five-years-old riding in a car with his dad who was crying as they listened to the James Taylor hit. At the end of the story the actor sings. 

The story of the performer's father, his father’s sister’s death, and of the cassette carrying Fire and Rain, is powerful. I’m so moved that I ignore my list and begin scouring the internet for more about the song. I’ve heard it many times but never given it much thought. But this morning it’s as if each note individually is communicating an idea. 

I am tired of being productive but yet unconnected to what I do. When I'm teaching meditation I always feel alive. But with the day-to-day administration of life I can forget what I am or why I exist.  And then it takes a young man singing an old song to bring me back to myself. 

Meditation takes us to the refined and subtle layer of existence that is the big T truth of what we are. But when our eyes are open and life unfolds we can forget what we experienced inside meditation. The intellect can mistake doing for Being. But in fact Being is inside doing if we allow, even train, ourselves to experience it.

Becoming familiar with this subtle layer of existence through meditation is critical to this training.

*Two highlights from my Fire and Rain research - James Taylor talking to NPR and James Taylor singing Fire and Rain at the Beacon Theatre.