If you have read my work previously, you have probably met Pepper, my office, meditation, writing companion. Pepper is almost six now and has reasonably well adjusted to being an indoor cat (she does have a large outdoor gallery to roam), she spends most of her day in my office, and most of her night raiding my desk for bits and bobs of things to play with and hide. In the morning she is often out on the gallery, watching the birds, being bullied by squirrels, yet somehow she hears as I sit down and invite myself into contemplative space with prayer, and she comes to join me in those moments, not always peacefully.

Pepper likes to announce her entry into a room, and she seems to expect a welcoming reply. She is also not concerned with maintaining a particular posture or the value of holding a mudra as a tool for developing awareness. She is quite concerned with presence and connection. And so I come to my time to sit in the morning and if she is not already in the office I can expect her to show up at some point as I am just quietly sitting, inviting an emptiness of mind and fullness of spirit.

Pepper is not the first cat to teach something important about what we are doing in meditation. There is the story of the man who went to India to study with the gurus and as he sat in his hut every morning a start cat would come in mewing; he would rouse himself and put the cat out and this happened over and over until he stopped rousing to put the cat out, he allowed the cat to come in, and as he did the cat simply lay down next to him and went to sleep. The lesson was about fighting distraction and a busy mind, allowing it to be what it is and in doing that it diminishes the power to pull us away from serenity. That is a valuable lesson. It is not the lesson I am learning with Pepper.

As I sit in the morning I have learned how to let the dogs bark and the cat cry, the birds chirp, the neighbors go about their business, to simply allow the world to do what it is doing knowing that it does not need me to stop, control, direct, or decide anything for half an hour. But what I have noticed in the last week or so as Pepper cries in the doorway and then makes her way to my chair is that pausing to share love with someone is not a distraction from seeking enlightenment. It is the whole point of what we are doing. I am slowing down enough to be present to the world, the little world that is right around me and that I can touch in any given moment, and I have been learning a lesson about what it is that I am supposed to do in that little circle of world in which I find myself. Respond with love.

I am not Buddhist and so I am not following a path of non-attachment. I think there is great value in that path, and many lessons to learn about how we positively or negatively engage with the material world, but I do not think that non-attachment alone brings enlightenment because I believe in a divine being that we are all called to attach to (or ‘reattach’ more correctly). And so as I sit in the morning, detaching from many distractions, I am also practicing open-heartedness that allows me to attach more closely to the divine love that generates our life. I thought I had to empty myself of thought and awareness to make space for this, but I have found that I just needed to slow down enough to see the opportunities to engage in loving in order to create more space for loving in the world.

Pepper jumps onto my lap, purring and kneading (also drooling which is a little funky), and I can choose to let that sit on the edge of my awareness and not respond, or I can lift my hand to pet her, acknowledge her presence, let her know she is welcome and loved, and which point she curls into a small ball of fluff and rests. This is the opportunity we all have: as we seek enlightenment, whatever that may be in our lives, are we understanding the difference between a distraction, a lesson, and the goal?