The short Answer? Because I don't have the time not to.......
I know, it seems crazy, how can I devote time to something like meditation when my life is already crazy busy? I do not have the time to do the things that are already on my plate, and you are telling me to add one more? Where will I possibly find the time to do this? That is just crazy talk. This is just a small sampling of the voices in my head on a regular basis when I first started to meditate. I wanted to sleep just a little longer, lay in bed just a moment more, and honestly, many times the bed won. Yet, at this point in my life, I cannot imagine not meditating at least once a day, and many days I find time to meditate more often.
So, first things first.... we should talk a bit about what meditation is, and what it is not.....
If you have ever been so involved in something that time seemed to just slip by, you started at noon and then looked up and it was five and you thought 'Wow it has been five hours... really?' Then you know what it can be like to meditate. Meditation is a focused state of mind, and that focus can be on any number of things. For some folks it is focused on the prayer beads of a rosary or mandala. It can be counting and noticing your breath, or it may simply be taking a moment to truly notice what it is like to walk, slowing it down, and feeling each little micro-movement in the step. It really does not matter if it is painting, calligraphy, pulling weeds, yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, running, walking, hiking, or sitting petting your dog, if you are taking a moment to purposely focus your attention as completely as you can upon your actions or your surroundings, then it is meditation... and no you do not have to be sitting crossed legged on the floor to do this.....
Thinking and distracting thoughts.... these occur, and that is part of what we are noticing. Your mind will wander, that is what the mind likes to do, it likes to wander around and check things out. Stroll down memory lane, or looking into the future to see what might be lurking just around the corner. It might also like to simply dissolve into a daydream and see where it cantake you. That is what the mind does, and it will continue to do this as long as you are drawing breath upon this earth. However, you can choose how to respond to these little side trips, and that is a key element to the whole process. When you mind wanders off, and it will, smile to yourself and bring it back to the task at hand. I like to smile and say inside my head... 'thinking'... and bring my focus back upon what it is that I am doing right now (counting my breath, working on calligraphy, pulling weeds). I used to scold myself, and beat myself up, because... hey, that is what we tend to do. However, it was not all that helpful, and just left me with more to think about than I had to begin with. So these days, when my mind wanders off, I smile and say 'thinking' and bring it back to the moment I am noticing. That is it, nothing special, nothing big, nothing dramatic. I just keep bringing my focus back to the moment or task at hand. I bring my focus back, again and again. It is like exercising a muscle, as I do this again and again, the tendency to drift away slacks just a little bit (maybe 1000 distracting throughts a minute instead of 5000).
Side effects... so what might you notice when you meditate? Well, for sure I began to notice how busy my mind was. I mean, my gosh was it busy... Thinking about new things, old things, very old things, reliving memories, retreading worries, just doing pretty much everything under the sun except paying attention to this moment in time. So I sat there noticing how busy it all was, and just coming back to my breathing again and again. I would do this for several days, then miss a few weeks, scold myslef and start again. I did this of and on from 2010 through 2012, and for some reason, in 2012 I began to be a little more consistant with the practice. As I did, I began to notice that the number of thoughts in my head stated to diminish during my meditation, and it started to become easier to bring my focus back to my breath. Some other intersting things began to happen as well.....
Anger... yes anger... I began to notice how angry I was all the time. Now understand, I had been angry all the time prior to this, but I had really not noticed the anger. However, as I continued to meditate, my anger becaome more visible to me, and I did not like that at all. I mean, come on, I was doing this meditation thing to become all passive and peaceful, not to start to see all my anger. However, I needed to see my anger in order to do something with it, after all, we cannot change what we do not see. So I began to notice how angry I was, and I got really curious about that anger. When I could catch it flaring up (something that was easier to do because I was now away of it), I woudl take a moment and try to feel my way into what was causing the anger in the first place. Sometimes I would see a clear cause, but often it seemed simply random, or when I followed it back to find the source I would simply encounter blank walls in my mind. However, I was watching it and that was important. It allowed me to step in and intervene prior to it flaring out of control, as well as stopping it quickly when it did flare so it did not burn too brightly. And when I could not do these things, I could at least own it openly because I could see it clearly. In seeing this anger, it allowed me to start working with it so it could begin to change, and that my friends is a story for another post.
However, as I continued to work through my anger, and the host of other interesting things form my shaddow world that arose, I began to find that meditation brought me more peace. I found myself looking forward to the moments of sitting and focusing, and enjoying the feeling of simply attending to what was happening right now. Taking the time to really sink into this present moment in time and see the beauty and joy that it holds, that it has always held, but which I was too busy and too distracted to see.
So, these days, I find that my meditation helps me have clarity to my thought. I find that it allows me to bring my attention to the task at hand, which given what I do for a living, means, that I can be more fully present in the room with the people who come to see me in the clinic. I can actually bring my focus completely to them, this moment, and what it is that is needed right now, and that my friends is pretty dange cool. And so I have come to a place in my life where it is clear to me that I do not have the time or energy available to skip meditaiton, the things it proivides are simply to valuable for me to miss out.
TO get started, take a look at Insight Timer, it is free, and has over 6000 meditation available to help get things started...... Some of them are mine...
If you would like to know more about my work, or to work with me, feel free to contact me. I post regularly to Instagram (@gilgrimes), Twitter (gilgrimes) and Facebook (gilgrimes) about whatever arises from my meditation each day. And if you would like to stay in touch sign up for my newsletter (probably once or twice a month at most).