This was the subject line in an email I received from a fairly new student of mine – one that had been meditating twice a day for about three weeks.
It’s a great question and one that students, friends and colleagues ask me often. There are plenty of days I ask myself the same thing. My answer is that for me personally, some days are easier than others and we need to try to accept the present moment as it is – without trying to change it or make it different.
When you’re trying to create a new healthy habit like meditation, the first thing you need to do is accept that every meditation will be different. This is true for anything we do in our lives. In whatever we do, we have good days and bad days. Some days at work our mind just isn’t as focused – we need to accept it without judging it good or bad. If we play basketball, our timing may be off when we shoot the ball. Other days everything comes very easily – it flows and our shots seem to fall naturally.
Highs and lows are a part of life. We need to accept them without holding on to the feeling that something isn’t as it should be. Meditation is the same way – some days we experience more mental turbulence than others. As we practice meditating, and let go of trying to control or change things to make it better- over time, we’ll find that those highs and lows even out. But, we’ll always be practicing.
After all, I call it my meditation “practice”… because I will always be practicing to accept what’s happening right now… as it is.
Peace IN.
-Andy
“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” – Eckhart Tolle
