Even though I haven’t been talking as much about my meditation practice on the blog, it’s still happening – each and every day for twenty minutes. It usually takes place in this room, after the work day concludes, to provide a demarcation between work and home – a helpful buffer to separate the stressful from the serene. It’s important for me to maintain that line – and it helps on both fronts.
Here is where I sit and light a stick of Palo Santo, close my eyes, begin the deep breathing, and meditate. It always begins with a head full of racing thoughts and dilemmas – plans that need to be made, items that need to be accomplished, and I acknowledge each thing that comes across the mind, then let it go. Eventually the thoughts slow, and the breathing becomes the focus. Sometimes more thoughts will come – what I need to get at the store, what I need to print out for work the next day, whom I need to call or text – and once I acknowledge these thoughts they leave. By the end of the twenty minutes, my mind is clear and calm. It returns to a base level of peace and unruffled contentment, and if I was agitated or annoyed at the start of the meditation, it has invariably eliminated that. It sounds too good to be true, but it has always happened this way.
That is partly due to the fact that up until now my worries and concerns have largely been small. But even when things turn serious, meditation has proven a helpful exercise in putting things into perspective and calming me when I’m lost in the muck. It’s a common place to find myself these days.
