Faith Venture

People have heard of the benefits that come from meditation.

Many say, “I try to meditate. It’s hard.”

Yoda says, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

I advise sometimes another phrase to turn the word try back on itself. Try easy.

Better is to consider meditation a practice.

Michael Jordan shot jump shots over and over. Every day. A golf pro hits a hundred shots out of the sand every day. It’s called practice. You begin with limited success until one day you make the shot almost in your sleep.

In Yoga, we come to practice, not to class. We practice our poses over and over. Then one day we realize that our hip muscles have stretched and we are effortlessly in the pose.

We sit to meditate. Or, we can lie on our backs. Or, we can even walk (just meditate with your eyes open if you try that one).

You don’t need a special meditation pillow to sit on. Or incense. Or a gong. Or special music. Or a dark room. Or even quiet around you.

Those are all nice, but not a requirement.

Gurus advise sitting erect in a firm (hard?) chair.

Why? So you don’t go to sleep.

But maybe what you need in that moment is sleep. What’s wrong with that?

Maybe it’s only a minute to start with. You don’t need two hours–but two hours is refreshing if you can do it.

All you need is to set aside some time and then practice. Just do it.

This entry was posted on July 30, 2019 at 6:50 am and is filed under Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.