You know that chair the laundry sits on? That chair! YOU KNOW THE ONE! Okay…if you don’t have the chair, you know someone who does! It’s that chair you dump clothes and things you plan to deal with later. Those clothes you wore once or the ones you might wear again later. The clothes you tested out but were too tight or didn’t match but you were in a hurry so you just dumped them on THE chair. The chair that holds the clothes you regret wearing. It’s the chair that now houses the clothes that came out of the dryer but you have no strength to fold! It’s the chair those clothes now permanently sit on! The chair of intention and postponement. The monument to the feeling of ‘not quite being caught up’. You know what I mean! Oh, I know this very chair of mine.

For this exploration, we will use this chair as our guiding metaphor. Two weeks ago, I had a very important interview that I had been anticipating for an entire month. During that waiting period, my literal hold-everything chair carried the weight of my domestic messiness. I postponed folding, sorting, and tending to small chores because my attention was quietly occupied elsewhere. After this really high stake interview, I came home and lay down to rest. What followed was the deepest nap I have had in years. When I woke, still enjoying the residue of that rest, something became clear. There had been a powerful buildup of anticipation surrounding the interview that I had not consciously noticed. Once it was over, the release of that tension showed itself in the quality of my sleep. That moment brought the chair metaphor into sharp focus. I had my inner chair filled with piles and piles of laundry. With the conclusion of this interview, I had emptied the contents of my inner chair. How heavy are our inner chairs, and how often do we tend to the laundry?

We sometimes call this chair and its content our personality, our responsibility, our history, our truth. Yet it is only laundry. A collection of moments(and things) waiting to be washed in attention and folded into clarity. Nothing more. The mind builds the chair. Our thoughts gather as piles of old stories, future plans, opinions we have not tested, fears we have rehearsed and then settle them on that chair of mind only because there is space for them to sit. And then the pile grows. Little by little, the pile grows. Soon it feels like a burden. Soon the weight feels like identity. Sometimes we look at the heap and say ‘this is who I am’, ‘this is what I have become’. We forget the heap is made of moments that arrived, stayed too long, and never asked to define us. The heap, just content that wants to be let go of.

When we take time to gently examine this inner chair, the whole structure begins to soften. Soon enough, we see that the stories we held on the chair begin to show their seams. The fears show their age. The opinions show how provisional they are and what once felt like a solid self becomes the loose fabric of impressions. The act of actually ‘seeing’ is what creates space. Within the space, we can tell the difference between what is true and what is habitual. It becomes easier to sense the difference between lived presence and accumulated clothing. The more we look, the lighter the chair becomes. The more we question, the less we feel owned by the pile. And the chair itself transformed…and so even the metaphor.

In the wake of my past crucial interview and personally exploring how metaphors can be an excellent tool for practicing this inner knowing, I see how examining our metaphoric pile, not from analysis but from the curiosity, takes us into a different expression of experience. By that, I will explain through an exercise that could help is examine the texture of our botherance— the clothes on the chair. We can also do this exercise as a way to sharpen perception, the seat of the right brain’s hemisphere. You see, most of us lead with a strong left-brain orientation which leads to our thought processes being more linear and analytical. To such minds, this exercise may feel strange or pointless at first. That is useful because, paradoxically, the stranger it feels, the more it loosens the grip of habitual analysis. The right brain works through imagery, sensation, intuition, and spacious awareness. When you explore the qualities of your inner state, you bridge both sides. You train the mind to perceive in more than one direction. You teach yourself to feel rather than explain. You give the chair a chance to be seen with fresh eyes. And once the chair is seen clearly, the weight of the pile begins to fall apart on its own.

Before we go to the guided meditation(which is included in the voice-over, or if you care, you can find it on my YouTube), I’d like for you to take a few seconds to get quieter to notice what’s happening in your inner space. Notice there is movement of thoughts, activity, palsations etc inside of you. Now ask these crazy questions: if they had speed, how fast do they move? Perhaps, they are slow vibrations, slow movements or fast rumination? Perhaps, there’s a sense of confusion about what I am even asking. Notice how fast or slow this sense of confusion appears? If your inner state had a texture, what texture would it be? Rough? Smooth? Coarse? Sharp? Dense? Loose? If all went well, these are the textures of ‘clothing’ on the chair of the localized mind. You are not judging anything but instead, naming the quality of the moment. You have mapped the surface of your inner pile. We will use this exploration in the guided meditation. You are practically exercising the right hemisphere and cutting out of the habitual thinking process.

But before we go, I offer up a treasure to hold on for contemplation. The treasure is a reframing of the chair metaphor. What if the chair becomes the Universe, the ground of ALL THINGS? What if we are the ones who can sit there. What if we can let our lives rest on something far more stable than our thoughts? What if I can allow myself to remember the last sentence? The chair becomes the presence that holds all experience without strain. We rest as the one who is held. We melt into the chair, becoming one with the chair.

What, oh what, can be wrong with anything?

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