The morning light comes through my living room windows as the sun rises over the city. It's quiet. The world that exists outside my apartment is just beginning to wake up. The mood is perfect for some self-reflection.
I jump out of bed, dress warmly but comfortably and step onto my meditation mat. I take a seat, arrange myself and sink into the softness of my own mind.
Right.
So, what actually happens is I drag myself, kicking and screaming so to speak out of my warm bed. I dress myself in a ridiculous hodge podge of layers in an attempt to recreate a walking comforter. I would be happier if I could just wear my bed. I sit down on my meditation mat, which is in "my spot" in the middle of the living room and I tell myself that I am in it for the long haul. An entire 15 minutes of stillness!
Except that I am a wiggly, squirmy, bouncy creature. I never stop moving, even when I'm still. My boyfriend has dubbed a particularly common version of my bouncing as the "larissa dance". It refers to any time when I am standing around, waiting for something-dinner, the bathroom, the coffeepot to finish doing whatever it does to make me my morning brew-and I begin to pedal my legs back and forth....like walking in place without actually picking up my feet. It's not a big movement but it is my notorious movement!
It's not that I can't sit still-I can. It just takes a concerted mental effort to remain that way. So, I sit down on my mat, ready to face my challenge. I sit tall out of the base of my spine, I press my sitz bones down into the mat. I pull my arms back, elbows tucked in and I close my eyes. I breathe. I count my breathing. I get distracted and forget where I was in my counting so I start over. I start to relax.
And that's where my Monkey Mind kicks in. Now I am not physically moving, I am mentally moving. It is a constant struggle between the list I am compiling in my head of the things that I have to do or where I need to go, or all the ways in which I am very clearly not Meditating and reminding myself that I'm supposed to be relaxing and breathing. Oh yeah, breathing. Wasn't I counting those breaths?
And so we start again.
Sounds miserable, right? It is and it isn't. I have a wonderful yoga teacher who tells us to "let go of The Meditator" (which, by the way, in my mind wears a cape and looks very much like a silly super-hero). His advice is sound: let go of that person in your head that is holding out for that magic moment when Meditation happens. Stop trying to Meditate and simply sit and be. In whatever state that is. Attempt to calm that monkey-mind chatter. If it doesn't work, so what? You've still got 10 minutes to get it figured out.
The struggle makes me want to give up. I think I'd find more success just making a stiff drink and calling it quits. The problem, however, is that I have had moments of bliss and calm--I have had a taste of that seductive flame that is a good, solid, meditational moment. The kind that truly soothes your soul, takes you outside of your own body and mind and leaves you feeling clean and calm and very, very capable.
I usually have mornings like the one I described above, though. And yet I keep trying. I know it's out there. I know that I'm out there. Waiting to be tapped into, I just have to let myself go.
At least, that's what I believe. That's what I've been told and that is what resonates within me in those rare moments between running and larissa dancing and doing laundry and working and Doing.
I am having an entire Monkey Day today it seems. As I write this I am tapping my foot to the music in the background, typing a million words a minute it seems and thinking about all of the other things that I should/could be doing with the precious little time that I have remaining to myself today.
The beautiful thing about meditation, even and maybe especially, a failed meditation (if we believe that such a thing truly exists) is that it is time that was spent on nothing but me. It was my moment, that I set aside and did something with that will help me connect with all my potential. Even if all I accomplish in those 15 minutes is a huge To Do list and some slightly restrained fidgeting, it is my moment to do with as I see fit.
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