Let's talk today about meditation itself.
What a beautiful practice,
Right?
A way to meet yourself in the moment as it is for what it is,
How you are.
When I started yoga and meditation,
I was in my teens and I was really frustrated.
I had a lot of thoughts.
I thought meditation was about having no thoughts.
And yoga was about contorting yourself into different shapes.
And I was like,
I'm not a pretzel.
Also,
My mind is not quiet.
I'm not flexible.
I can't do this,
Right?
Fast forward a few years later,
I'm getting my yoga teacher certification and guiding meditation groups.
What happened?
What changed?
For me,
It was the approach,
The understanding of what meditation really is,
For me.
And the guidance I got was not that it is about sitting on a little lotus pad of bliss and floating above the world being in a cloud of perfection or anything else.
That it was really just a journey,
A practice.
And an experience of meeting yourself as you are,
So that all the sensations in your body and around you,
The thoughts in your mind,
On your heart,
The feelings and emotions,
All of those combined were to be treated as weather.
Not bad,
Not good,
Just a rainy day,
Just a little bit of hail,
Just some clouds,
Just a sunshine bursting through.
And that without judging it.
I was to take the position of the sky.
So you create a little space.
So there's enough vastness.
To encompass and be grander than.
All of those various elements within and around you.
And creating that psychic distance,
That little bit of space.
Room.
Between me and whatever was going on inside.
That was the ticket.
That changed my whole relationship with this art,
This practice,
And what I've come to understand it as a relationship,
A relationship builder,
A relationship itself.
You have a relationship to your meditation practice,
In meditation,
You have a relationship to yourself as you meet yourself in new ways.
And then you have a relationship to everything that arises in life-lifing itself.
Life coursing through you,
Life being embodied,
Lived,
Experienced,
Enjoyed through your vessel and your unique experience of this existence.
So with that in mind,
I've been meditating just as just joyful,
Right?
But it doesn't mean you sit on the cushion and peace.
Aha.
The other beautiful tip I got was sometimes sitting on a cushion or creating silence.
Can actually be a little jarring.
And it's like taking out the trash.
You put your foot on the little pedal and woof,
It stinks actually at first.
You're like,
What is all this noise?
What is all this chaos?
I'm angry,
I'm sad.
Like all of that has room to surface.
But you're taking out the trash,
Right?
You're meeting all of this,
You're connecting with it,
You're clearing it out.
And that gives it a different way of being than just expecting it to be.
This place you visit that's always pristine.
Nothing is that unraveled,
But it's not about having a still lake.
It's about learning to be with those tides of life,
Of turning.
A line in the sand that felt like a limit into the horizon of what's possible when you show up.
With an open heart and open mind and a full experience of this park.
So I hope that helps a couple of those reframes to just not put so much pressure on a certain experience.
Yes,
Of course,
You sit with a hope and a goal and an expectation to some degree,
Or else maybe you wouldn't be drawn to your cushion or your mat.
And yet once you arrive there and it's done the job of getting you there,
Can you let it go and just be curious and available to whatever arises,
Meeting it as the sky.
Embracing all the different weather that is in the moment.
And if you have a clear,
Nice day.
That's great too.
Enjoy.
