I've known how to meditate for 10 years now. When I was a journalist, I was sent off to learn transcendal meditation for New Woman magazine and I wrote a piece on how it improved my sex life in 30 days...! (Apparently the TM office phone rang off the hook!)
Why oh why then haven't I kept it my meditation habit up? I know that it benefits me in every department - not just in the bedroom.
I meditate when I remember. It's not a habit. I'm reading Happiness by Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk, and he encourages us to cultivate happiness by practising habits that create good soil for happiness to take root in. Happiness does not just happen, he says, we work at it just like we do at getting fit at the gym.
Meditation is one thing that I know makes me feel peaceful on every level - if I do it.
Am I just lazy?
Maybe just afraid because the first few minutes (sometimes the whole 20 minutes) has all my horrible, mean thoughts/worries/fears rising to the surface to peck at my brain. If I keep myself distracted with my busyness, then I don't have to notice their pecking.
My meditation teacher described it as being on the surface of stormy sea and feeling sea-sick, terrifed you're going to drown until you surrender and learn to breathe with your scuba-diving equipment and start listening to the calm in and out of your breathing and you're under the waves, safe from hitting your head on the boat.
Until you see that shark.....
We are currently day 18 of the Big Peace programme and I now declare I will be meditating every day for the rest of the programme.
want to join me?
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