MEDITATE DAILY ("no time" is no excuse)

Hello friends,

We lead busy lives. We can think of one hundred excuses to skip daily meditation practice. An employer once told me, "The better you get at making excuses, the worse you'll get at everything else." Our most prevalent excuse is "time". We are at its mercy. We've allowed ourselves to believe that time controls us. We're always "running out of time" or "can't find the time". This is silly if we look at the meaning of "time".

Time is a concept of the mind. It can be controlled. There are two perceptions of time: the physical and the psychological. We keep clocks, calendars and day-planners to remember appointments, birthdays and future plans. These are simply physical reminders, in coordination with our lives and the rotation of the Earth. Our psychological perception of time is much different. We tend to obsess over unreal predictions of events and the unrealistic consequences we'll experience when we're not in control of time. These are delusions we manifest in our minds. The irony is: when we meditate daily, we train our minds to exist in the present, where time does not exist. Set aside some time everyday to practice the absence of time.

DAILY PRACTICE: You do not need to plant a Zen garden, or visit a spiritual temple to achieve a Zen-state of being. There is a simple phenomenon: Where ever you go, there you are. All you need is a peaceful place where you feel comfortable: in your home, a park, the parking lot at work, any place where you can sit comfortably and tune out all distractions. Once you establish this place, and commit to your daily practice; you are on your way to greater fulfillment! When we are juggling kids, career, school and other activities; we often convince ourselves that there is no moment of peace in our day. We ARE PRESENT during all of our daily activities. We are living, breathing, feeling beings. Instead of listening to the insignificant chatter our minds generate throughout the day, we can easily turn our focus inward. While you're "stuck in a long, boring meeting", you can focus on the positive energy around you. First off, you are employed while many people struggle to feed and cloth their families. Finding opportunities throughout your day to calm your mind and focus on positive energy will enhance your awareness, your patience and view of your surroundings and situations.

CLEARING THE MIND is sometimes easier said than done. Sadly, this factor seems to be the main deterrent in Western Culture to commit to meditation. We are active, imaginative, mufti-tasking creatures. We hold our thoughts in high regard. The only problem is: thoughts are only thoughts. They do not exist. We cannot download the pictures in our minds and upload them on YouTube. And if you could, how many views do you really think you'd get? Placing value on the constant flicker of thoughts in our heads is pointless and a waste of precious energy. They are illusions. They are not "brilliant" or "creative". True imagination, creation and vision occurs when the heart and mind are connected. This is when you have an opportunity to influence the world. Meditation opens the frequency that connects heart and mind. We are bombarded by images that suggest how we should view the world and ourselves. The Western mind is racing all the time. It's exhausting and destructive. We need to refocus our energy and find our inner strengths. When we attain that focus, our minds see past the influences around us because we are comfortable with ourselves. 

When you sit comfortably, ready for meditation, sometimes we find it very difficult to let go of self and everything that is going internally. We fidget and squirm, trying to wipe our thoughts away, but the harder we try, more thoughts appear! Allan Watts (American author/Zen teacher) described thoughts as ripples in water. You cannot smooth out the ripples with a flat-iron, you only create more ripples. If you leave the water alone, it will calm on its own. In that regard, there's a simple technique that helps me. Image that your thoughts are images that are projected onto a movie screen. Do not judge what you see. It doesn't matter if the images are dark in nature. They are part of you. Just observe them. When you focus on them as they arise, the images will eventually subside. You will be left with a blank screen. You will have exhausted your thoughts, by letting them happen naturally.

FOCUS ON BREATHING. With every inhale, image bright, cleansing light is entering your body. With every exhale, image black, negative smoke is leaving your body. Sometime I see plus (+) signs in the white light and solid, black minus (-) sighs in the smoke. It doesn't matter what we see as long as we have the same goal: calming ourselves, body and mind to achieve higher consciousness.

"Time" takes the blame for much of our inconsistent behavior. That's not fair. It cannot defend itself! It only exists because we made it up! If you allow you mind to not be effected by time, time will not effect you. So, if you spend some time everyday to forget about time, over time, you will find yourself free from the grasp of time... and you'll miraculously find yourself spending more time on the positive elements of your life.

Thank you for your time :-)

All positive comments and questions are welcome.