Three Things I Wish Someone had told me about Meditation

 

It’s the cornerstone of every self-help book, spiritual workshop and guide to awakening. It’s the medicine that people from all walks of life recommend to heal just about anything. And for the longest time I simply could not get myself to sit down and do it.

You guessed it, I’m talking about Meditation.

I think it was something about the word itself that made me chafe.

Whenever I heard the term “meditation” I couldn’t help but see a blemish-free being, sitting in some free-flowing gown, absorbed in a state of complete communion. A yogi in perfect posture partaking in blissful soul-gazing amongst a cloudscape of inner peace. It sounds amazing. It also sounded nothing like my inner reality.

I’ve certainly had moments of feeling profoundly connected with all that is. Times when my mind is open, and the goodness is clear. But I’ve also got a brain that likes to run like kudzu, exploring every nook and cranny of an idea until I’m exhausted by my own eagerness.

 

 

I had a spiritual practice for years before I started meditating. I talked to the moon when it was full, and wrote my dreams down every morning. I sang to plants and had crystals come to me in my dreams and went on shamanic journeys. I even led groups of students in guided meditation but when it came to my own meditative practice, something inside of me was as stubborn as the bare patch of earth under a grove of black walnuts. It just wouldn’t sprout.

That is, until I had this epiphany.

At some point I realized that meditation was just another word for something my spirit ached for. That meditation wasn’t the blemish-free existence of an ascended master. It was just me, caught in the tangle of a long day’s stress, wanting to rest in the moment. It was the way my body longs to lean into the doorframe and watch the sun go down for a while. It’s the small part of me that is always so eager to explore the present, like a puppy for whom each day is an entirely new life. And it was the part of me that feels sometimes out of place, alien, and discombobulated, that just ached to come home again.

I realized that meditation was just another word for coming back to myself and everything changed.

Now I know that meditation can truly be something I actually look forward to. That it can be as fulfilling, and medicinal, as a warm bath and a good book, or as thrilling as an evening hot toddy. I just had to wrap my head about a few essential truths that, very literally, set me free.

Click the video below to hear the three key insights that completely changed my relationship to this practice.

 

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