Now,
who in their right mind would ever imagine telling a story
about a raisin?
But this is a story that needs to be told.
The raisin deserves it!
*
I’m at a Mindfulness Retreat.
Our facilitator kick starts the retreat by passing around
a bowl of raisins,
asking us to take two each.

From a distance they look like little pieces of chocolate.
I am disappointed when I discover that they are raisins.
I hate raisins. I don’t do sugar.
If anything,
some dark chocolate.
Never sticky, sickly sweet raisins.

Anyway,
I want to participate,
but I subconsciously start slipping into automatic pilot,
to get this raisin-thing over with
as quickly as possible.

I just know they are going to ask us to eat the bloody things.
Probably with closed eyes and really slowly.
Mindfully.

But then they take it to a whole new level and ask us to actually
engage
with the raisin.
Feel it…Slowly…
Smell it.
Even listen to it!
What?
Listen to a raisin?
I mean, really!
Luckily they don’t ask us to speak to it.

But hey, hang on!
When I try to listen to it, I discover…
when I put it close to my ear and move it slowly between my fingers,
I can hear a crackling kind of sound.
Almost like the ocean….hhmm…interesting.
Ok.
But so what?

Then we have to eventually put it in our mouths and roll it around our tongues
….come on…come on….
let’s get this over with now!
feel the texture…
ja, ja…
and then finally, we are allowed to bite into it.
And
I get the surprise of my life!

It actually tastes delicious!
Not sickly sweet as expected.
Just a truly delicious, sweet taste.
Ok, wow!
So, the raisin surprised me.

And then,
we have to do the same with the second raisin, in our own time.
I really don’t get why we have to do it again.
The point was well taken the first time round.
We’ve done the exercise.
We even shared our different raisin experiences with each other.
Sigh.
Anyway, here we go again….
I try and do it with as open an attitude as possible.
But between you and me,
a little bit faster than the first-time round.

So here I go again…
roll it around my fingers… feel it… listen to it… smell it…
put it in my mouth… rolling it around with my tongue, sucking it for a while,
allowing it to visit each and every tooth…
and then
taking a deep slow breath before finally biting into it.

And I get an even greater shock than before!

The little raisin doesn’t just taste
delicious and sweet like the first one.

This one
EXPLODES
in my mouth
with such a gentle and tender sweetness
it almost takes my breath away!

How could this be?
What happened IN me to make this experience so different
from the first one?

I know that inside of me
something shifted before I bit into that second raisin.
It was very subtle and subconscious.
I almost did not notice it.
It happened in that last slow breath, before biting into the raisin.

For a very brief moment…
I became quiet…. and I listened.
I became humble…. and respectful.
I surrendered.
And really listened to whatever story the raisin had to tell me,
with an open heart.
I was in a space of total acceptance of the raisin.
No judgement…. No expectations.
No preconceived ideas of what it would or should taste like.

I realise that, without knowing it,
I have been at war with raisins my whole life.

Judging them and even hating them and never giving them a chance
to get to know them.
Never appreciating them for what they really could be like.

Even after the first raisin proved me wrong!

Suddenly and unexpectedly my subconscious resistance to raisins was exposed like a naked wound.

What
beautiful peace
flooded through my whole being
as I gave up the war
and just became quiet and listened to the raisin’s story.

Maybe my next raisin will be sickly sweet and gross.
But so what?
That’s not the point.

What matters is to give the raisin a chance to speak its truth.
And listen to it.
BE with it.
Experience it.

Good OR Bad.

And then to let it go.
Embrace it… Or forgive it.
Until next time.
And to then be open to be surprised by the next experience.
Allow it to be a new story each time.

Going with the flow.
Being in the Here and Now.

An ‘old’ lesson experienced in a brand new way,
in my body and in my bones.

A lesson well taken from a sweet little raisin.
No delicious dark chocolate could ever have taught me
such a profound lesson!