Day 8 - Listening Meditation

28 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 8

I listened to Sharon Salzberg's Real Happiness audio book, chapters 3-9 last night while I was cleaning the apartment. 

I lit a couple candles, turned on the white christmas lights in my living room, and listened while Sharon talked. It was very peaceful and while I wasn't giving it my undivided attention, and need to listen again, I got a lot out of it. I think I'll listen to Sharon instead of music whenever I'm cleaning for a while.  ; )

I've several times found myself concentrating on my breath for a few seconds here and there today. Out of nowhere. I'm at a red light. There's my breath. I'm waiting for the tow truck. There's my breath. 

It's teeny but I think it's starting..
.

Day 7 - Back to the Temple

28 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 7

I stopped by the Hare Krishna Temple tonight. I was in the neighborhood and hadn't been in a long time - and thought it might give me a little push in my meditation challenge.

It was nice. Arati had just started. Soft singing, very peaceful and comforting. To try and pull it into my own personal meditation, rather than being distracted by the devotees and the deities, I tried to focus on the marble floor.

After arati, I went outside an remembered a very involved lucid dream I'd once had about meeting Hare Krishna founder, Srila Prabuhupada, in the room he used to live in when he was in Los Angeles, in the '70s.

The past sort of flowed through and around me while I stood there for a few minutes and imagined what it had been like at that time. I first visited the temple six years after Prabupada died, but his presence was still very much alive in the temple and the large and active community there. I really feel it in this spot around the back of the temple.

I still haven't gotten in any real mindfulness meditation in this week. But I'm getting very close.

Day 6 - I Can See The Other Side

28 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 6

OK. Yesterday was obviously Wednesday hump day. Today was terribly hectic but by evening I was back in my stride. 

Way off balance there, but I think I can ...

Day 5 - WT...?

28 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 5   

Seriously. WTF? Every day since I started this challenge I've been challenged times ten. Today was the most frantic, hectic, ridiculous day I can remember, and I didn't even leave the house. I didn't have time to leave the house.

Breakfast was a yogurt popsicle and I didn't have lunch till I ate an egg muffin sandwich at 9pm. I think I drank four Coke Zeros today.

Am I the only one being tested like this? I knew this Meditation Challenge was coming at a particularly challenging time, but I had no idea it would be this bad. Things are falling through the cracks right and left. 

And when exactly am I supposed to have time to meditate for twenty minutes?

I'd put a photo here, but I don't have time.

OK. I GET IT. 

If I'd been meditating consistently for months or years or decades, this week would have rolled off me like rain drops off my Turtle Waxed windshield. (I go to a drive-through car wash where they just wax you all over.) Or not - since my car broke down and I still don't know what's wrong with it. 

It's Day Five. It's almost midnight again. Oh, fine. It's after midnight. It's really Day Six but I'm not counting it Day Six until I wake up!

This isn't going so well. 

Day 3 - Is This Day Already Over??

28 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 3     

How can it already be 11:34pm? I've got SO much on my plate, and I haven't even had time for dinner.

This is going to be a frantic week, but I'm going to sacrifice some sleep to at least listen to another chapter from Real Happiness tonight. There's no way I could meditate right now. I'm buzzing, I'm so amped from doing, doing, doing!

My biggest goal right now is to find a life/work balance.

And that's all I have time for tonight.
Have a wonderful week!
✿

Day 2 - Transcendental Meditation

28 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 2

I've always had a hard time keeping to a regular meditation schedule. Or a regular meditation style. I was thinking today... When did I first get into all this meditation, yoga, spirituality, shamanism stuff?

Then I realized that while I was baptized Presbyterian, and my Grandma took me to Sunday school, my family never went to church and my parents always told me they were agnostics. That always bothered me because it felt like, "We just don't know if there's a God or not, so we're just going to go about our lives as if there isn't one."

Seriously? Is this supposed to be comforting??

We didn't say prayers or read the Bible or have any sort of religious anything at all, except Christmas and Easter which were all about Santa and the Easter Bunny. Well, when I stayed at my Grandma's house, she did make me say, "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." Scared me every time.

I've been an insomniac at least since I was eight. I'd sometimes lie in bed all night as a little girl thinking about God. Or no God. Jesus, or no Jesus. What happens when we die. Is there a heaven? Am I not going 'cause I don't know if there's a God?

My mom took me to pow wows and protests and demonstrations when I was young, and I was exposed to a lot of interesting and different sorts of people, and I was precocious, so I was always talking about serious things with adults. About American Indians and India and Africa, religion, spirituality, vegetarianism, animal rights, etc.

Little TMer in Marin, 1969
Notice the "Sizzler" dress - so short it had matching panties.

When I was twelve,  my dad moved out, and shortly after that, Mom felt like she and my little brother and I needed ... something. So she took us to learn Transcendental Meditation from a disciple of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the San Fernando Valley. 

We each went in alone to meet a nice older lady and had to give her a flower. She explained how to meditate with 'my own' special mantra. I wasn't to tell it to anyone, ever. I finally looked it up a few years ago, and I'm pretty sure they give all kids the same one. 

Anyway, we all tried it for a while, and at first it seemed to almost give me a buzz. I liked it. I felt special. Like I was in on some sort of cool secret. Especially since George Harrison was doing it, and he'd been my favorite Beatle since I was four.

Paul, John, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, George and Ringo

I just couldn't do it for very long, or every day. I really tried, but I spent almost all my time trying to run off thoughts trying to bum rush their way into my mantra meditation.

I finally gave it up after a couple of months. We all did. I've taken it up again now and again, through the years (I still remember my mantra), but have never gotten the hang of it enough to stick to it.

I didn't actually meditate yesterday, but I did watch a Sharon Salzberg video about meditation and I listened to the introduction to "Real Happiness."

Trying to MEDITATE tonight.

The 28 Day Meditation Challenge

I saw a week or so ago that SharonSalzberg.com is hosting another 28-Day Meditation Challenge this year, and dammit -  I'm gonna try to do it.

I live in Hollywood and my attention is split a dozen different directions at any one time, I have to take pills for my lifelong insomnia, and it's about time I get it together. Or move to the country, which lovely as it would be, just isn't in the cards any time soon.

This particular program is based on Sharon Salzberg's book, "Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 29-Day Program." (I downloaded it onto my iPhone.)

She's been teaching and writing about meditation - based on vispassana and metta (insight and loving kindness) for almost 40 years.  I'll be blogging about my efforts and my progress - hopefully, about my success.

So we'll see. You're invited to join me. Just chime in here any old time.

Sharon's also teaching a Real Happiness online retreat at tricycle.com for 4 weeks, beginning on Feb. 4th. I'm going to try to try to participate in that, too.
I'm technically starting on February 2nd, since it's after midnight - but in my world, it's not tomorrow until I've gone to sleep and gotten up in the morning, so I'm counting this as February 1st.  

I'm joining the community on her website and giving my best shot at meditating 28 days in a row, and blogging about it here.

Maybe this will finally get me in a groove.
Here we go.