Lucy filling in for me during my period of being a meditation slacker

A few days ago, I made a big confession to a friend.

I came out with the dirty truth: I hadn’t meditated in almost three weeks. Yep, me, the Buddhist chaplain, the creator of the Liberated Life Project and impassioned advocate for an awakened life. No time logged on the meditation cushion for days, going on weeks.

My friend let out a gasp. “Oh, I feel so relieved to hear you say that!” she said.

So perhaps I am doing a public service here by coming clean and saying yes, it’s true – even the most dedicated dharma-heads get lazy sometimes.

Here’s what I’ve noticed over these couple of weeks. I’ve been all over the map, literally. I’ve been on a couple of trips for business, and so one excuse I’ve made is that it’s hard to meditate when I’m traveling. (But not impossible by any means – that’s just me making excuses.)

And I’ve been all over the map, metaphorically. My thoughts have been more scattered, I’ve been more emotionally reactive, and in general just feeling funky. The little bit of discipline that I have (not much!) has completely evaporated away over these past few weeks, just like the puddles of rain that disappear quickly in the high, dry desert of northern New Mexico where I live. I’ve been going on cookie and ice cream binges, and you may have noticed that I haven’t written a post on this blog for weeks either.

It got to the point where the more I realized how long I had gone without meditating–and also how long I’ve gone without writing something here on the blog–the more distressed I felt. And yet that distress turned into even more avoidance. Maybe you can relate to this?

In short, I’ve been a mess. A blessed mess, perhaps, but a mess nonetheless.

Now, it’s not like meditation is a magic bullet. You will hear me say that again and again. And sometimes meditation makes things ‘worse’ before they get ‘better,’ if only because when we finally slow down and stop, it’s amazing the stuff that comes up that we have spent so much time running away from.

But a consistent meditation practice grounds us in a place of stability, at the same time that it helps us to relax into the groundlessness that is so often a fact of life. This can only be a good thing.

There are, of course, all the physiological and psychological benefits of meditation that have gotten a lot of press. Beyond that, there are the spiritual gifts that come through, unique to each of us, as we give ourselves to a practice that wears down our ego  at the same time that it opens up our heart.

And if we keep that heart wide open, we will ‘get’ how intimately linked we are to all other creations on this planet of ours. And some kind of deep caring gets generated from that place. Whoa, as Keanu would say.

After making my confession to my friend the other day, I vowed aloud to her, “I’m making a promise to get back on the cushion again.” And I did, almost immediately after that conversation. It was only an 8-minute sitting period in my little home meditation space, but it felt good. And now I am writing this post for you and for myself — and while it was hard to get it going, now that it’s rolling, this too feels good. It may not have been the longest meditation session, and this is most definitely not the most beautiful blog post, but it’s something. And that is everything.

So if you’re anything like me and you’ve dropped away from a meditation practice for a while, or if you’ve had intentions to start but haven’t gotten around to it, please – don’t worry. Don’t feel guilty. Just stop all that self-berating, right now. Please.

Take this opportunity, right here, right now, to do the simplest possible thing for your good and for the world’s good. Sit your butt down and just breathe. Just begin. Or begin again. I’ll be right there with you.

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