“Meditation isn’t easy for me… sometimes I don’t even have 5 minutes to myself and when I do I can’t quiet my mind.”

These are the most common things I hear from people regarding meditation:

📿 meditation is not easy

📿 it is too difficult to quiet my mind

📿 it is simply not possible to find the time to meditate

I have been practicing meditation since I was very young and it has become a dominant part of my existence. However, I don’t always sit on a cushion and meditate in silence; it’s more like an inner dialogue, or awareness program, that runs through my mind at all times.

Believe me, I understand being busy and overwhelmed with demands of the world around us, expectations, obligations, external noise and over-stimulation, etc. But meditation is more about Listening To The Universe With Your Heart And Being In Tune With That Conversation 24/7. It becomes a natural part of your Being Present In Mindful Awareness. Everything else is a distraction and a distortion of your reality.

You may think that it is not possible to be fully present and carry on with a demanding life, but it truly is.

For example, one thing I do as I’m working, waiting in line, waiting online, waiting on hold, washing dishes, driving, being a passenger, yard work, housework, whatever, is to sing mantras.

If singing aloud is not practical, I sing silently. This filters out so much external noise and distraction and yet it keeps my awareness clear and sharp so I am able to be fully present, and quite often more productive as a result; because singing does so much to raise your vibration and clarity is invigorating. There is much more I could say to expand on this topic, so in a future post I’ll go a little deeper into this subject 😉

Sometimes I simply Become Aware Of My Heartbeat, or of My Breath In And Out, or of Sensations In My Body.

Another thing I do is Counting, sometimes I do the 1-10 counting meditation in rounds, other times I count rounds of 108, or whatever number resonates with me at the present time. Some people think numbers are either good or bad, have one meaning or another, and I do not discount that concept, however, I feel it is more important to be aware of what resonates with you at any given moment and honor that feeling.

A counting meditation is very simple, just become aware of each number, synchronizing it with your breath, or your heartbeat, or your movement. When you have reached the end of one round, begin again maintaining awareness of each number in synchronicity with your breath, heartbeat, or movement.

These are Living Meditations, an ongoing conversation of body, mind, spirit, emotion with the universe — tuning in to your vibrational being and becoming harmonious with the vibration of the universe.

I have heard so many people say that meditation is not possible for them and I get it!

The busy mind is always jumping around from one thing to another and it is not easy to switch it off. I’m familiar with that experience! For years I suffered from extreme insomnia because I simply could not switch off my brain from sorting through my to do list, trying to organize my priorities and plan how to accomplish everything.

Here’s what I discovered about that.

Letting my conscious mind play this game of control over my agenda produced very poor results. It cost me a great deal of sleep, which impaired my ability to regenerate and maintain good health and it didn’t help my productivity in the slightest, in fact the quality of my work suffered too.

There is a Zen Proverb that says you should Sit In Meditation For 20 Minutes Every Day, Unless You Are Too Busy, Then You Should Sit For An Hour.

I know this proverb references Sitting Meditation and what I’ve been talking about is Living Meditation, however, the point is the same. The point is to awaken to the fact that the conscious mind is not qualified to run the program of your life solo, and in fact it is the subconscious mind that runs the show. The conscious mind is too slow and inefficient, but while it’s busy thinking it’s doing everything, the subconscious mind is running mad circles around it.

The real problem is that while you’re busy trying to support the conscious mind in its valiant but foolish effort, the subconscious mind is running amok unsupervised!

Meditation is the only way of communicating with the subconscious mind. So what I’m saying is to spend a little more time getting to know it, to make it a welcome and loved part of your being, and then bridge communication with the conscious mind so they become clear and effective.

This is mindfulness, and mindfulness is so much more efficient and effective that any time you “think” you are losing to meditation you are actually gaining in multiples. This is another area to be expanded on in discussion or another post 😉

As for insomnia, I still experience it from time to time, but now, rather than let my conscious mind slog through my unending to do list, I focus on my meditations, mantras, breathing, etc., sometimes I fall asleep fairly quickly and sometimes I don’t, but even when I don’t fall asleep right away, the meditations are permeating my being, blessing me with communion of body, mind, spirit, emotion and enriching my quality of well-being. When I wake up, the meditations and mantras are still playing in my mind, and they are with me 24/7.

As you practice this, you incrementally raise your awareness. When you get to the place that your awareness of your internal process is Always On, you become aware of the fact that your super busy, reactionary, conscious mind has been the tail wagging the dog.

So, you may think, “but I’m not wasting my time, I’m super busy juggling my to do list, handling the details of my demanding life.”

Are You? Really?

Do you realize how much Time you spend Waiting?

When you are riding the elevator, you are Waiting to get from one floor to another. When you are driving, you are Waiting to get from one place to another. When you are at a stop light, you are Waiting for the light to turn green.

These, and so many other examples, are Moments of Waiting — You can fill this time in Mindlessness or you can fill this time in Mindfulness.

📿 It Is Your Time

📿 It Is Your Choice

📿 It Is Your Opportunity

If you like the results you have been getting from your present use of your time, beauty, keep doing that.

However, if you are dissatisfied with the results you have been getting from your present use of your time, you should make new choices, because we all know that expecting different results from the same actions is not feasible.

Does any of this resonate with you?