MEDITATION

Perhaps we've been practicing some form or other of meditation and at times we may feel a bit stuck. It just isn't going anywhere for us. We've tried everything and still we feel off-center, cut off from a sense of flow. Perhaps we are trying too hard to make something happen, and we just need to relax a bit and let go.

A friend of mine had been meditating for some time. When I asked how it was going, she said, "I meditate daily, but nothing is happening." Sometimes we just have to let the nothing happen. Quit fighting with our experience even when it seems not to be working. Meditation works at a very subtle level; when we can feel our hair growing, we know the level at which our meditation practice is working its beneficial change in us. Quit fighting. Be patient and let go of the need for our meditation to be different than it is. Today's meditation is the best of our lives—because this where we are—today. As S. Suzuki used to say, “We always need to be beginners; to have a beginner’s mind.” So we can constantly release all that has happened with our meditations up to now and just be new, fresh, innocent, open and receptive each time we sit down to meditate—always as if for the first time: So our meditation time becomes filled with ease, peace and grace. Don’t disturb the meditation, as in Zen they say, “When it’s noisy, don’t disturb the noise.”