Day 20 of ? of meditation & blogging!

11 minutes 12 seconds

Friends,

Todays session came at the end of a full days work and (unusually) vigorous physical activity.

I was called the other day and asked to do a morning shift, 5am to 1pm in this case. So I tried and failed to get to bed early last night, woke with the alarm around 3am and got myself ready and headed into work. I did, briefly debate myself as to whether I should meditate in the morning and then blog after work, but I thought I might not remember key points and had little to no time to both meditate AND take notes before leaving the house. I worked a full 8 hours, and did a number of projects moving large, or unwieldly, or heavy items from one spot to another. Some of the items were combinations of the three or all three. I had to take a number of rests. It has been far far to long since I have been accustomed to long stretches of activity. (note to self: let’s work on that shall we?)

A few times today I was able to notice thoughts and feelings that were not serving me in the moment and acknowledge them and the shoo them away to get on with whatever business was at hand. I was also the most comfortable in my own skin I have been in ages, emotionally and mentally speaking. I felt a lot more like the me I remember being and have been wishing I could find again. After work I ran some errands and picked up some prescriptions and a few necessities. Finally mercifully I headed home. I completed a few writing exercises, made The Fabulous Jonathan and myself some toasted open faced Cheddar and Simple Chicken Salad sandwiches, and then finally fetched myself some ice water and cued up the music and my phone timer and began.

The music, with a strong simple drum beat this time, was easy to focus on; as were my breaths. Thoughts came, as they do, and were easy to note and allow to float off. A measure of stillness and peace was found within. Yet the aches and pains of the body after a long day and some rare vigorous activity were much harder to ignore that the general stiffness of a body still waking up. A few times I tried to breath out some of the tensions of my body, with some success. Thoughts continued to bump into my consciousness or snuck up upon me until I realized they were happening again and returned to the music and my breath. At one point I dared to kick off my shoes from my aching feet with my eyes closed and some measure of attention upon my breath. I found at times my focus would switch, seeming on it’s own, between the music and my breath. Time seemed to crawl, and while I was at times more aware of aches and pains and feeling bones deep tired, there were also times of the inner stillness and quiet. The timer chimed and I stilled it and continued for a little bit longer.

Now, I did feel some measure of the inner silence and stillness. It was fairly easy to focus on one element of the process, say the music, or my breath, or recognizing thoughts and letting go of them; the difficulty lay in holding my focus for very long and in letting things fade into the background from where I was trying to focus. I think I was just a little too tired today.

Lesson learned, I hope. Sometimes you have to pace yourself and sometimes you have to rest. Meditation and Mindfulness are Practices, and there is a reason so many traditions speak of Spiritual Practice as “work”!

Have you every had a similar time, where you engaged in a regular spiritual practice and it wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad and it… just sort of was? I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

Bliss & Blessed Be,
Pax / Geoffrey