You Can't Force Yourself To Meditate

Just like you can't force yourself to fall asleep or fall in love - any effort would be contraindicated. Just like with sleep, what works is to create conditions that will help your body fall into a meditative state and then give yourself permission to surrender to forces bigger than you.

The secret to yummy, delicious, and restorative meditative states is not stern discipline. On the opposite, it is letting go of control, allowing, surrendering. Trusting your own rejuvenation pathways to do their magic on you. If I hadn't been this post for pragmatic scientists, I would have said, "It is about letting your Soul take care of you for a bit."

If you are like me, you probably spend hours a day managing everything everywhere. Emails, meetings, deadlines, chauffeuring kids to and from sports, etc. It is hard to imagine a facet of life in which our project management skills stay dormant.

Meditation can be a sacred place where we take our hands off the existential driving wheel and disappear, dissolving into the vastness of the Universe. An opportunity for our brain to close all the unused apps, shut down all the processes, and reboot. So when we emerge from meditation 10-20 minutes later, we feel like a freshly restarted computer. Unburdened and ready for another round of the game we call Life. (I hope the teachers of my tradition don't roll their saintly eyes in heaven because I use a software analogy to describe the elixir of meditation.)

"But Mayya, any time I try to meditate, all I feel is the discomfort from the horde of unruly thoughts that zoom at the speed of light through my head. What feelings of bliss and freshness are you talking about?"

Ah, yes, of course! I hear you, and I will get there in my next article. Cliff hanger, lol

Meanwhile, it is a snow day on the East Coast!