Just don’t call it Meditation.

If you’ve followed me for a bit, you may be aware of my relationship to meditation.


Or maybe not.


One thing I’d say, it’s always shifting and changing.


As I become more aware of my mind and it’s tendancies, and come into greater contact with the ever present reality underneath this mental flow, there’s less attachment to the ideas I had about meditation.


I required strict formalities - certain time I would sit daily, posture and technique. There was a sense of enforced discipline that I felt was required to ‘acheive these higher states’.


The implication here is that I am doing a lot of things. But what I am noticing now is that there is far more simplicty here than what my mind wants to see or believe.


The mind wants complexities - it wants to solve problems and work things out. And so, to be with the simple act of breathing is difficult to stay with, it gets boring quickly.


Meditation is always happening.


You don’t have to do it.


It’s always here and now. There is a presence and awareness that permeates the fabric of existence.


And so when I sit to force some experience and call it ‘meditation’ I am creating the vey resistance to being with what’s already here.


Silent sitting seems more appropriate. Just being. Not doing anything. Not trying to acheive some special state.


In this recognition, there is more flow, an effortless awareness of breath, sensation, thought, feeling and sound.


And in the awareness of these things moving and shifting and changing, and in the practicing of letting them go when I get pulled in - I notice that there is an inner stability and foundation.


I am not the movement. But that foundation from which these things are noticed.


This felt sense of inner stillness, not trying to get still - which is like a manufactured stillness coming from the mind - this in my experience is easily lost at the slightest distraction.


But to feel the stillness that’s already here.


So, you may ask next time you sit for your practice:


”Is stillness here already?”


And see what arises.


This very act of asking brings awareness to the stability and stillness that’s already here, underneath the movement of the mind.


And just imagine how you’d move through your day connected to this inner stability…


Meditation is powerful in the proecss of transformation and vital in behaviour change. For you folks that need some hard data on this, there’s some cool science demonstrating this.


If you’re struggling maintaining a consistant practice or need help getting started, set up a free call to explore how 1:1 meditation sessions can support your practice.