MY SPIRITUAL SELF

View from a swing

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I used to have a fairly regular meditation practice. I would even attend a Buddhist meditation service once a week. This was way back when we still lived with Chris’s mom, before I flipped our lives into moving chaos. The meditation practice came to a screeching halt when Chris got sick and it never recovered. Sitting still with my thoughts is very very difficult. There was a long time when I couldn’t even be in savasana. As long as I kept moving in my yoga practice, everything was A-okay. Stopping for a final relaxation moment was torture. I got over that. Kind of. I will admit that more often than not, I end up dozing off in savasana. If I was one of my students, we would be having a discussion about sleep management and bedtimes. I’d have to explain to myself that I have a very reasonable bedtime. I just don’t always stay asleep.

There have been attempts to regain my meditation practice, but it just never sticks. I’ve made excuses and declared that mindfully chopping vegetables for dinner is my meditation act of the day. So I decided that if I was going to resolve to do anything in 2020, it would be to re-establish my meditation practice. Chris will be gone seven years in February. It’s time I learned to sit still with those thoughts and other thoughts not necessarily related to Chris. So I set my alarm clock for 5 AM (my usual wake up time is 5:50) and placed the new journal my Mom bought me for Christmas on the nightstand. Monday morning, when that alarm went off, I rolled over and hit the snooze button on the alarm. Fifteen minutes later, when the alarm sounded again, I moved to hit the snooze button again, but just turned the alarm off instead. I laid there for a minute deciding what to do next. Going back to sleep was a bad idea because it would just make getting up on time more difficult. So I propped up my pillows and sat up in my bed and set my meditation timer for twenty minutes.

Here’s what went down in those twenty minutes:

Should I rearrange my bedroom? What if I moved my bed over to that wall? Would it even fit there? If I moved the bed there would I still be able to open my closet door? If I move the bed to that wall, then I would have to move the giant elephant brass band poster to that wall over there. How many holes would I have to patch in the wall? Can I move this furniture on my own? I should probably measure the bed and space before I try to move it. Is this room square or rectangular? It looks rectangular, but that could be an optical illusion from the way I’m sitting. I really need a tape measure. If I move my bed, I have to come up with a new night stand option. Would moving the furniture around in this way give me more floor space or would it pretty much just be the same? I’d like to get new curtains. If I get new curtains, I might as well repaint the room. I like the color of this room, but I could go with a darker shade of blue. Oh wait…I’m supposed to be focusing on my breath right now. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I’m going to peek at the timer. Okay, one minute left.

Then I wrote about all of this in my journal. I have my Mamaw’s bible and in the notes section she wrote down the dates for when she moved the living room rug and the refrigerator. So writing about moving furniture runs in the family. Also, I had zero expectations about this. I knew that I would not just be able to sit down into meditation and find peace and enlightenment after so many years away from this practice. Creating a habit like this happens in steps. The first step is getting my body used to getting up at this time in the morning. It is making the conscious effort to sit and be present in the early morning hours. The next morning, I got up when the alarm went off. I wrapped myself in my robe and created a comfortable space to sit. Then I chose one of the guided meditations in my meditation timer. It was the kind of guided meditation that made my cynical brain roll it’s eyes, but I listened to it any way. Just when I thought I had had enough, the speaker said “Energy flows into the thing you are focusing on.”

Alright. Those are words I could use.

Where do I want to be sending my energy? More importantly, where am I wasting my energy?

Those are some really good questions to ponder as I get this meditation practice re-established.

Now excuse me. I need to go find the tape measure.