I have to say I am one of those people who believes that meditation changed my life. I was in different forms of therapy, from analysis to talking therapy, for 30 years, and a Valium addict as well, and I say that after all that time I was perhaps even crazier than before.

I would have perished long ago without all of that help. It does take a village.

At one point, I was put on a mild anti-obsessive medication that caused white flashes in my head when I took the pills. I took this whenever I went out to walk in the woods.

It did calm me down during the days of horror, as I like to call 2008.  We are never really cured, us mentally ill people, but we do get to recover a little bit every day if we work hard.

I started meditating soon after I met Maria, I don’t know if those two things are linked. I had never really turned inward in that way before, not even in Freudian analysis, which hardly exists any more.

It was while meditating that I listened to my own mind, which raced along much like a Nascar championship race, crashes and spins and dizzying turns and thrills at all.

My head was like one of those gypsy carnivals, all lit up, always moving.

Henri Nouwen writes that the real spiritual challenge is cultivating presence.

I was always too busy to be kind to myself, to count my blessings. I didn’t have time, and my head was always spinning too fast to stop and do anything but lost perspective and make bad decisions.

In meditation – my guide was Thomas Merton, who wrote so extensively about the beauty of solitude – I got a good look at myself, and was horrified but also motivated. I didn’t wish to be like that.

I wanted to be grounded, to be present and calm at peace with myself. In meditation, in solitude, I came to see who I was and how my mind works. I came to understand that I could change my way of thinking, of seeing the world.

Shortly after I started meditating, I stopped taking any kind of medication for my mind, and got off the valium. Boy, was I surprised to learn it was addictive. Nobody had told me.

I also came to grasp the importance of letting go in meditation: of not holding grudges, or working things over and over, or harboring  resentments, or doing he-said she-said, of  feeling slighted or being angry.

Life is tricky as you all know by now, there are nasty people out there, and disappointments, and unexpected troubles. Life can get out of hand in a flash. Letting go is the first step towards living in the moment, rather than nursing hurts from the past or stoking fears of the future. I am good today, I am good right now.

I have a meditation app that I love, and I am on a ten day guided meditation about fostering feelings of kindness about myself, so that I may learn to be kinder to others. The instructor knows his stuff, the lessons are 10 minutes each, and I take them one at a time, in the morning after breakfast and the chores. For me, meditation is best at the start of the day, and then again, in the late afternoon, during my Peaceful Hour (which Bud, above, joined in today).

I breathe in and out, listen to my body, enter the stillness, bask in the quiet,  and it was in meditation I saw just how much time my head spent in looking backwards, and remembering hurtful things. Oh my gosh, I had no idea how much of my life I spent doing that, how much energy I was using, how much time I was wasting.

Recently, a friend misinterpreted something she thought I said and sent me a hateful and hurtful message. She didn’t even grace me with a conversation about it, or give me the benefit of an explanation. This, I said, is just what I have to let go of. No drama, no he-said, she-said, no grudges or arguing or huffing, no tears and laments, no puffing in outrage.

It was over, I told myself, move on, there is nothing there for me. There was no conversation to be had, no justice to be done, no apology to come. You cannot have a healthy relationship with an  unhealthy person.  The other day, she ran into Maria in town and she was, Maria said, very frightened. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t know what to say to Jon if I see him.”

And so here I was, I thought, going over this hurtful episode in my mind, and the person who upset me was terrified of me.

What did you say?, I asked Maria: ‘I said Jon will move on, just be normal.” I was proud of that answer.

I sent my friend a message. It was not important, I said, I am sorry of I hurt you in any way, whether I know how or not. Let’s move on, you have nothing to fear from me. Life is too short and precious to waste.”

The grudges and resentments and hurts that have piled up in my head for so many years are almost gone now. I am many pounds lighter.

I seek to be blessed and live in the land of the blessed, and sometimes I know what that means and sometimes I don’t. The spiritual people say that claiming our own blessedness, being kind to ourselves leads to a deep desire to be kind to others and to bless them as well.

I think this is happening to me.

Small acts of great kindness are all blessings to me, they do make me feel blessed, they do make me want to bless others. I think when I really let go and really feel blessed, then I can face my own brokenness and the brokenness of others.

Tomorrow: Red and I tell “The Story Of Red” at the Oldcastle Theater in Vermont. I’m up for it.