Meditation

This was in a post from one of the blogs I read (Teeny Tiny Pieces)

May you know peace
May your heart remain open
May you feel safe, honored, and respected at this time
May you see the light of your own true nature, and see that as good
May you feel love, compassion, and human kindness
May you feel whole in body, mind, and spirit
~   Unknown

I attempt to meditate. Usually in the mornings before I get up or at night before I go to bed.  My struggle with meditation is not in the sitting still; I do that pretty well. My biggest challenge with meditation is quieting my brain. It is constantly jumping from one subject to the next. Making my lists of things to do the next day at the shop; orders to make, bookkeeping to do or even blog posts to write. If it isn't about my work; its about a craft. Which project do I want to work on next, how I'm going to fix the mistake I made 4 rows ago in my knitting . . . this could go on and on about what ever topic.

Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all – consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts – trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation. ~ Osho

I love this quote. I think we can sometimes take meditation too seriously. So seriously that we worry about all those thoughts, or traffic, as Osho calls it; "but you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation. That is the key. "It is witnessing" and "sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both."

Go easy on yourself when you are working on your meditation practice. I'm still learning how to make it a part of my every day life and sometimes get frustrated with the ongoing traffic my head. One of the things I'm working on this year is just letting those thoughts come and releasing them without judgment and evaluation.

This post is part of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am going to really get this blog going. So I decided I'd join the Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to post 31 posts in the month of January and to get more traffic to my blog and to other blogs. This is post number 14. For more info or to join the challenge check the link below.