Establishing a Practice
When I first started meditating I thought it would help me just calm down, maybe be less anxious. I was wrong. At least at first. Meditation is a tool to show you that the world isn’t as solid as you think. And at first that can be really hard to sit with. Because as you try to “quiet your mind,” all of those old habits will come up. Establishing a practice, getting through that first wave of brain noise, is the hardest part.
Weirdly, sitting with those habits changes everything. Our minds are like a muddy pond — if you stop stirring it, the mud settles, and then you can see the bottom. That “bottom” is wisdom — the insight that everything’s empty of inherent nature. But that’s a topic for the next post.
My point in sharing this was just to say if beginning a meditation practice feels hard, that’s because it is the most challenging obstacle to overcome. It’s like going to the gym for the first time, it sucks and you hate it and then you’re sore after. But as you go more it becomes easier and eventually you even look forward to it.
Meditation has the power to show you that those thoughts and habits can change. It gives you a space between old automatic response and the response you want to have. The first step is just starting to practice.