In Real Magic Dr Wayne W. Dyer says, “The nonspiritual being has no place within his awareness for the practice of meditation. The spiritual being cannot imagine life without it.”
I have tried and tried to establish a regular meditation routine and stick with it and I just keep failing. This has often caused me some feelings of guilt and frustration. How can I claim to be this spiritual person, a spiritual teacher no less, and not have a good, strong, daily meditation practice? It just doesn’t seem right.
This morning I had an aha moment… perhaps my ADHD diagnosis has something to do with my struggle to stick to a regular meditation routine? I felt a bit silly for not having realized before that the way my brain is wired may well have everything to do with the fact that I find trying to enter stillness for long periods on a schedule next to impossible.
The thing is, I do meditate every day, just not in the way that I’ve come to think of as a proper practice. I don’t have a specific time scheduled to meditate each day. I don’t get in at least 15-30 minutes of meditation at a time. In fact, it’s pretty rare that I last a full 30 minutes in meditation, but it does happen occasionally. However, I do practice mindfulness regularly during my daily activities. And as I have mentioned before, the one conscious breath that I learned from Eckhart Tolle is my regular companion throughout the day.
Most days, I only meditate for a few minutes, or even seconds, at a time. I do it sporadically, on an as needed basis, rather than on a schedule. I stop to focus on my breath and still my mind any time I start to feel stressed, overwhelmed, or just find myself feeling bored. By the end of the day, I’ve usually gotten in at least 30 minutes of meditation, even if it has come in the form of 20 or more mini meditations that allowed my overactive mind to rest but offered less resistance to the nature of my brain.
Where did I get the idea that this was wrong or somehow inefficient? I don’t believe I have ever been taught or read anywhere that I shouldn’t meditate in small, sporadic time frames. I think I’ve just gotten the advice so many times to schedule time for meditation and to spend as much time as possible in stillness, that I began to think of those as rules of meditation.
So, I remind myself now, that spirituality has no rules. My meditation practice needs to be based on what works best for me, which may not be the same as what has worked for my favorite spiritual teachers. Spirituality and our spiritual self-care are a very personal thing and should be focused on meeting our personal needs.
In the past, when it came to work and household tasks, I have let go of the conventional ideas of the right way to do things and have learned to embrace the way my brain works and to work with it. I can do the same with mediation. In the same way that I have given myself permission to flit about my house, picking up and cleaning here and there as I feel moved rather than stressing out over the feeling I need to get one task completely finished before I can move to another, I now give myself permission to go into stillness as I feel moved, and stay only as long as I feel moved to, rather than stressing out over doing it at the right time for the right amount of time.