Andrea Mee Maurer: The wisdom in 'sitting and doing nothing'

I asked Andrea Mee Maurer to  kick off the Wisdom Series because I love the way she writes. A true storyteller, Andrea works from a place of deep 'genuineness'  - a word that I've invented just for her. Each post that I read on her beautiful blog makes me feel as if I've been invited to sit down at a cozy kitchen table with a friend. At the same time, her work inspires me to write - because it makes me think, and often laugh, and take things beyond surfaces. If I had to name her particular wisdom I would say that Andrea works from the wisdom of open-heartedness. I am pleased and proud to introduce her to you.---When I think of the word wisdom, I immediately think of meditation.Now, before you run off, grab your sketch pad and colored pencils and begin drawing a mental image of me as some wise old, well-grounded, Birkenstocks-wearing peace monger, you should know that I am not that. By any stretch of the imagination. I have never even owned a pair of Birkenstocks. Nor do I practice the art of meditation on a regular basis.I should. But I don’t.It goes against everything I believe to sit and do nothing for any length of time. The beliefs are always the problem, aren’t they? This belief, the one that makes it difficult for me to develop and stick to a daily meditation practice, is the one about my worth being tied to how much I work. I work therefore I am. If I’m not working then I must be a lazy, good-for-nothing, ne’er-do-well. And who wants to live with that?But here’s the thing… every time I meditate, I gain wisdom. Real, honest to goodness, deep down, soul stirring wisdom. About me. About my life. About how I can better serve the world. About my ridiculous beliefs… You name it. Everything I’ve ever really needed to know, I’ve learned through meditation.Meditation told me, quite surprisingly at the ripe old age of forty, to become a writer. Meditation also told me to become a life coach. He conveniently left out the part about how to combine those two professions (insert years of flailing here).Meditation told me to start writing a blog (another mysterious piece of the puzzle that’s finally starting to make a bit of sense).Meditation sang me a cheesy song from the early 80’s laced with messages of reassurance about the path I was on and currently questioning. (I kid you not.)Meditation provides me with inspiration in regard to just about everything from how to help my coaching clients, to coming up with blog topics, to creating the actual content of the next chapter of my book.The list goes on and on…Every single time I sit down and successfully quiet my squirrel brain for longer than a few seconds, Meditation uses that opportunity to tell me something of import. And I rarely question what I learn during these sessions, mostly because the lessons are typically too random and anomalous to have been contrived or manipulated by my own conscious brain. They are the epitome of being from out of left field. Maybe Meditation knows that’s the only way to get my attention. If the messages didn’t border on bizarre, he and I both know I’d most likely just cynically dismiss them and move on.Maybe my meditative results are directly correlated to the way in which I approach them, like a therapy session. I go looking for marching orders, not peace. Truth be known, I gave up on peace a long time ago. Maybe my next life will be about finding peace. I came here this time around to get something done. I’ve got dreams to inspire and people to motivate. I don’t have time for Kumbaya.When I meditate I want answers to important questions. That’s been the mindset from the start of my experiences, when I actually lay down on my couch, folded my hands across my chest and announced I was ready. It took me a few minutes to quiet the incessant chatter inside my head, but once I had everyone’s attention, I began posing the questions that were on my mind (out loud).I don’t specifically remember the first couple of inquiries that I made. I do remember that I got a mentally audible result to each of them, much to my delight and surprise. The final question, and its subsequent answer, is one I’ll never forget. I asked about my children and why I seemed to hold them at an arm’s length distance emotionally. I had become painfully aware of a deliberate holding back of myself from them and I was rather intent on tearing down that wall…for all our sakes. I posed my question and waited.Don’t worry, the voice said. They won’t leave you like she did.I sat straight up and immediately began to sob. Nothing could have hit me any harder than the words that now bounced around in my reeling mind. She referred to my biological mother that had departed my life at age 5, reappeared for a brief stint in my 20’s and then once again, hit the proverbial highway. She was the ghost that I had spent many years and thousands of dollars trying to exorcize, through therapy and self-help, apparently to no avail. She was what was still standing between me and all of my relationships, including the ones with my kids. She was the one who had been whispering in my ear, you’re not good enough.And I had no idea she was still lurking around in the shadows of my life.It took me a long time to get up the nerve to meditate again. The marching orders I’d received that first time around would keep me busy for quite some time. It was kind of like discovering that the ankle you broke years ago had been set wrong and was now, all this time later, causing problems for the entire rest of your body. The only way to fix everything was to re-break the bone and set it again. Ouch.Re-breaking that bone wasn’t pleasant. It was, however, exactly what I needed in order to set just about everything else in my life right. The result was worth the pain. The ends justified the means. Just like Hemingway said, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” I feel particularly strong at that particular broken place.Wisdom is deep truth. We all hold it within ourselves. Mostly, I think, we avoid it, choosing instead to look outside for a cheaper, easier pill to swallow… something to “fix” what’s broken for us. If, however, we can somehow find the strength to get quiet and ask the questions, the answers will indeed present themselves. And they’ll come from a place that we least expected them… within.* * *Andrea Maurer is a writer, life coach and soon to be public speaker. She's dedicated to helping others become big enough, brave enough and comfortable enough in their own skins to share their authentic selves and unique gifts with the world. She calls herself a storyteller because life has given her plenty of them to share. She wholeheartedly believes that we can all choose to write new stories that start right now, with all its promise and possibility, and end however we'd like them to end.Connect with Andrea at: http://AndreaMaurer.com* * *This post is part of The spring "Wisdom Series," a 13-day blog series featuring some of the wisest women I know: 13 posts, each written from the particular 'wisdom' of its author. The theme for this series is Awakening.