I haven’t been meditating. No coincidence, I stopped when I dropped my son off in Alaska. I decidedly turned my back on my spiritual routine, at first because everything became chaotic and I lost the control of my daily routine. But then when I got home, I didn't sit because I didn’t want to be with the discomfort. I mean I have to walk around with it all damn day. Why in the hell would I want to take it to the cushion as well?
And it is right here where I meet the part of me that hasn’t grown up, hasn’t changed, hasn’t made all that much progress at all. This place of counter resistance. I know what helps me lead a sane and fulfilling life. I have practiced for over 26 years now. Actually even before that I started yoga and meditation when I was like 11. So it has really been a life long practice for me...but here I am meditation-less for the past three weeks except for a few minor sits.
The resistance to sitting down with myself is so strong right now. But that is really just another way to say that I am willing to not do the thing that I know will help me so that I can suffer longer. Short term gain for long term pain...again!
So I am encountering resistance to myself, to meditation, to surrender, to a lot of things actually. I am raising my spiritual middle finger and yelling “NO!” There also might be some foot stomping...And pretty much no one cares or can even hear me, so it kind of begs the question as to why I am even doing it. No one else is suffering because I have wholly abandoned my spiritual practice. Just me. I suffer. So dumb, and I am not a stupid person.
I can see that I have reached out to the thing that I have always reached for when in pain...others. People, things, items, distractions. I want out of this pain so I refuse to do the hard work of sitting still with it, and instead deploy the same strategy that hasn’t worked for years...grasping. Grasping at anything and everything that can possibly make me feel better.
I know that when I encounter resistance I am in trouble. Maybe not life or death trouble, but trouble. I encounter my own resistance and then I let it take me to places that I have already been and didn’t like. It is truly nuts.
I was talking to my trusted sponsor yesterday and she told me that I had to return to meditation and I knew she was right. And I knew that I would and then I knew that this whole stupid last three weeks that I have stubbornly refused to sit down just prolonged my agony. But I also know that I couldn’t do it any other way. I have made progress but I am anything but healed. I am better than I have ever been but I still need copious amounts of work.
So I am going to stop writing and then go sit on the damn cushion. I will report back tomorrow as to what I get out of it. Likely a mind that is out of control and all over the place. But that is what I have learned in meditation, that the mind can jump around and cause all kinds of mischief, but me, the person who watches the crazy person living my life, she can just sit there and practice allowing it all to unfold. Remaining open to it all but not consumed by it. And I know, because I have a lot of practice sitting - almost as much as I do running and grasping, that I will find myself again. That is the thing about a spiritual practice, it is always there even when you leave. I can return and it acts as if I never left.
Sitting down with all of yourself and your resistance is a great way to encounter life. All of it - the messy, painful parts of life that make us feel alive. Sometimes it is too much this life, too much and not enough at the same time. So I will sit with all of that encountering my resistance to myself...again.
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