Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Meditation encouragement

Years ago, a priest friend of mine made this astonishing statement: "Oh, I can't do yoga; I'm not flexible enough." Can you believe it? Dude, the way you GET flexible is to do yoga! The same principle applies to people who think they can't meditate because they're too easily distracted. We start where we are and go from there. Everybody does. That's the wonderful point made on the website Wildmind about starting to meditate:
The idea behind meditating is not that we're seeking to have "perfect meditations", like an Olympic gymnast going for a perfect 10 in a competition, but that we're doing some basic work on developing our minds, more like when we go to the gym and do some exercise. When we go to work out, it wouldn't be a very helpful attitude to think, "Oh, I can't work out, I'm not strong enough or fit enough". The whole point of working out, as we know, is to start from where we are and to develop greater levels of strength and fitness.

It's the same deal with meditation. If we're very distracted, or very anxious, or we keep getting irritated by sounds in our environment when we're trying to meditate, that's just what we're starting with. That's our raw material. Meditation helps us to become aware of these habitual tendencies, and also helps us to work with them so that they become less prominent in our lives, so that we become a bit less distracted, less anxious, more accepting.

And just like working out at the gym, where we don't make some sudden leap to athleticism, in meditation we change gradually. Breath by breath, meditation by meditation, day by day, we work changes within our hearts and minds; changes that accumulate over time. It's possible to change from being a very anxious person to a very confident person; to move from being habitually in a bad mood to being more laid-back. We just have to do the practice.

May I recommend the "so what" practice? What you do is just say "so what" when distractions arise. Realize that it really doesn't matter. Just gently bring the mind back to the meditation support. No forcing, no strain. Just give the mind permission to rest.

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