My Meditation Practice Is Not Perfect
Jiwan Shakti, Sacred Pathways’ resident yogi – and my husband, reminds me about the importance of my mediation practice a lot. He is committed to his daily practice compared to my on-and-off again approach. I fully admit to not being perfect as much as I coach others to do it daily. Occasionally, he gently reminds me I should be more consistent with my practice. He can tell early on when I am not. I think you all know what it’s like to take that kind of advice from someone close to you. That is, I tend to not want my closest loved ones to remind me that I’m off track! Sadly though, he’s usually correct.
Jiwan is not only our Yoga teacher, he’s an avid reader. He picked up a copy of Alan Watt’s book This Is It and then turned me on to some of his lectures on YouTube. Finding his lectures proves to me there are some good reasons to use social media but, that’s another story altogether.
What Alan Watts Says
Alan Watts reminded me of the importance of meditation. He cautioned that thinking all the time strains the mind because thought is linear and requires a lot of effort compared to no thought, or mediation. Further, he claimed that thinkers are divorced from reality and should spend some time in quiet observation. Whoa! This guy ends up making me think even more than I already am!
Alan Watts is on to something and Jiwan is right. I need to get back to my regular meditation practice. It’s the only way I can make sense of this world we live in. Alan says the real world is silent, the thinking world is abstraction. Abstraction is an interesting word that refers to the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events. For example, I’m thinking far too much about my desire to spend more time on my creative talents. Instead of letting those activities come to me and out of me, I keep thinking about them and why I don’t have the time to “do” them. Writing this blog post is a perfect example. I think about it for days, but don’t take the time to get the thoughts out on paper in a consistent and meaningful way. All the thinking about it consumes my mental thoughts and distracts me from being present to whatever other event is happening in my life.
What My Experience Tells Me
Where do our best ideas come from anyway? We don’t think them into existence. Do we? My experience tells me they are given to us. They are given to us in the silent moments. All I need to do is create the silent moments – make time for quiet observation. Then I will know what action to take! Ah, action. That’s another area I get bogged down by thinking it through too much. Sometimes I just need to take the next step in front of me and that lets the dam loose. The rest comes to me, effortlessly, and with ease.
Life usually flows easier when I make that effort to keep up my meditation practice. It is okay to drop the thinking for a while as it is more than tiring, it is exhausting! Perhaps I should listen to the Yoga teacher in my life more often.