Sometimes, I suck at meditating.
Yes, I’ve been doing it a long time. Six years, in fact.
Yes, I love it. A lot.
Yes, I know its good for me.
Yes, it makes me feel a whole lot better in my day.
But there are still days I resist it. Days I want to do anything but meditate. Days I just want to ignore that part of myself and busy myself up in my life. Anything but meditate!
And when I sit down to meditate my mind is like a monkey in a crystal shop throwing everything around. Ideas I’m sure I will forget, memories carrying shame, stories bringing joy and more come up.
It’s hard to keep my eyes closed never mind quiet my mind!
Sometimes I’ve waited so long to meditate I can barely stay awake and I meditate lying down instead of my normal lotus pose with a straight back position. Sometimes I let my mind take me on a journey even as I hold the pose and chant the words of the meditation. Sometimes I just give up on everything and let myself just sit in that space for the time.
I am grateful that I can have that time even when I resist it. The important thing about meditating is that its a practice and its rarely perfect.
I’ve learned its best to make the space for the meditation no matter how it is I end up showing up for it. Making space daily for the mediation to occur even if I’m in bed by the time I get there keeps the momentum of the meditation going. This is important because every day you meditate you are feeding a new neural pathway or a new belief system or something, and every day you do it you give it more strength and power.
No matter how you show up for it the very fact that you did show up in the first place is HUGE. The next big step is showing up fully present for the meditation. These two things allow you to have powerful experiences.
Sometimes I can only do the first part.
And that’s okay.
I don’t say this as an excuse. It would be awesome if I could be fully present all the time in my meditations, however, sometimes I just can’t be. Which is just like life: sometimes I just can’t be present.
Sometimes it’s too much for me, sometimes its overwhelming, sometimes I just have a lot of stuff to process and sometimes I’m avoiding.
And its all okay.
Again it’s not an excuse. It’s my way of taking the pressure off I used to put on myself when it came to meditating. I had to make it to the meditation space and make it perfect. Now I just make sure I show up and do my best to be fully present.
I let where I am that day dictate how present I will be in my practice.
Some days I really should’ve done some yoga first. Other days I should’ve done it in the morning. Other days I needed to make more sense of the world before I could focus. And it’s all okay. I let all of that go and simply practice coming into presence.
My meditation practice is a reflection of my life. It tells me what’s up and on the days I’m resisting if I can expand that question to be what am I resisting in life I can often see it.
It’s a beautiful process continuously shifting.
All it takes is for you to just show up every day.
And do your best.
Ignore everything else telling you something different.
Meditation is your time to show up for whatever that Source Energy is to you.
Don’t fill it with shame, guilt, should’s or shouldn’ts or anything like that.
Fill it with the openness to meet yourself where you are and acceptance of where you are at.
