Sometimes the simplest acts, such as sitting down to meditate, are the hardest. Our lives are often designed to be full of distraction, both internal and external.

Perhaps this resonates: you feel like you don’t have enough time, or like you aren’t going to do it right. Or maybe you feel apprehensive about what you might encounter when you sit and get quiet. But here’s the good news (and there is lots of good news!): there is no way to meditate wrong.

In fact, when we sit, we are not pushing anything away, we are not trying to “turn off our minds,” but just the opposite.

So the essence of meditation is training in something that is quite radical and definitely not the habitual pattern of the species: And that is to stay with ourselves no matter what is happening, without putting labels of good and bad, right and wrong, pure and impure, on top of our experience.” ~Pema Chödron

It starts with choosing sit. With learning to stay: with whatever comes up for us, with the ebb and flow. We build a new muscle when we choose this radical act– one that is naturally reflected in the rest of our lives.

It starts with practice, and with building this new spiritual muscle: not labeling, not controlling the outcome (although we all try to). As we learn to be in experience, we get to enter our lives fully– no holds barred. We are fully invested. With that, when we fully enter our lives, we really feel the essence of our experience: good or bad, light or dark. Time expands and our hearts broaden to include everything in our field of experience.

“Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.” ~ Pema Chödron

As we learn to be in experience, we get to enter our lives fully– no holds barred. Click To Tweet