WHEN IT'S HARD TO MEDITATE

Stand up for yourself. Sit down.

For all my talk about how important it is to meditate - and as much as I believe it - I find myself on certain days avoiding it.

It goes something like this. First I look at the day’s lesson from A Course in Miracles. That’s not hard. I welcome it. Then I read the lesson, which on most days feels wonderful yet on some days is met with various degrees of avoidance technique. “I have to read that article about how the war in Iran is over but it’s not really over” - which I actually don’t - or, “I need to take that powder in case acid reflux kicks in” - which I actually don’t - or, “I need to see if my daughter wrote back about Sunday yet,” which I really don’t. All that before I can even begin to make myself concentrate.

That’s when you realize how powerful the ego is. There are days when it feels as though anything would be easier that just sitting there for fifteen minutes with your eyes closed, saying nothing, doing nothing. What is it the part of the mind that would rather do anything else? If anything, that part of the mind is why we need to do it.

After all my years of practice, this should not still be happening. So one of my tricks when those days arrive — and I’m sure I’m not the only one — is this: I set the alarm on my phone for exactly the time the meditation calls for. I tell myself, You’re going to do this. You’re not going to open your eyes again until that alarm goes off. Just do it. In other words, I erase choice. If the alarm hasn’t gone off yet, there’s no excuse for opening my eyes to check the clock for whether or not it’s time!

What follows when we do that, of course -- and it doesn’t even take that long — is that the initial anxiety floats up and dissolves. It’s like removing the top layer of fat on top of soup that’s been refrigerated. In A Course in Miracles, it says we have to go through a ring of fear in our approach to God. All we have to do is stay with it, exercising even the slightest discipline. That ring is only hot air. It’s like you’re on an airplane and when the clouds part, the sky is blue again.

The change we need in the world will not be achieved by changes on the horizontal level so much as by changes on the vertical. I was in a conversation the other day that made me happy, and as I listened to the other person I thought, “This is only happening because my meditations have gone deeper.” Why? Because it put me in greater alignment with the kinds of things that had to happen, both externally and internally, to result in that conversation.

Many people these days have a feeling there’s some next big step in front of them, but they don’t know what it is. Many have said to me, “Yeah, I have to figure that out.” Yet “figuring things out” is part of the model of thought that got us here; it’s not the model that will rescue us now. It’s part of our brain power, of course, but we need soul power as well these days. We don’t have to figure things out so much as we need to surrender them to a Higher Power. This is the Zen concept of an empty rice bowl. Present an empty rice bowl to God so He can fill it for you. Out of the no-thing comes all things. The most powerful aspects of consciousness right now are Humility, Availability, and Receptivity. They will do more to birth the new than will anything we can figure out.

Often when I’ve lectured about the importance of daily meditation, I’ve sensed there were three groups of people in the room. There are those who meditate regularly and nod their heads when I speak of its importance. The second are those who agree with the concept, know what kind of meditation practice works for them, and are reminded they’d probably have a happier life if they did it more regularly. A third group seems present too: people who don’t so much need convincing as they simply don’t know where to start. There are many varieties of meditation techniques, after all: Buddhist meditation, Kabbalistic meditation, Transcendental Meditation, secular meditation techniques, the lessons in the Workbook of A Course in Miracles, and so forth. Any google search or walk through a bookstore reveals that. If you’d like to meditate but don’t know where to start, say a simple prayer in your heart and within days techniques will start to fall at your feet. Someone will mention a class, a book, a teacher, a video, and then all of a sudden you’ll be off and running. Or I should say, you’ll be off and sitting!

Some days you’ll crave meditation, and some days you might resist it. But regardless how you feel about doing it, you’ll always feel better for having done so.. We coddle our pain too easily these days, when in fact there is something right in front of us that can do so much to assuage it. The Opponent is not out there, after all; it’s in our mind. And its peak experience is our suffering. It would rather you do anything in the world but sit down, shut up, say your mantra, and love God.

Stand up for yourself. Do it anyway.

*Don’t forget the Silent Minute for world peace that many of us practice every night, 6pm PT/ 9pm ET. The feeling you get, knowing you are joined in doing this with people all over the world, is very moving. Join us!