Shelter from the storm

It’s so easy to start spinning and spill over, and feel like I am just chasing myself and my life. How can I turn that around? Now is the time for me to be diligent about practicing my meditation regularly, taking deep calming breaths throughout the day, staying committed to my daily exercise, and mindfully connecting to prayer.

Even so, right now I am not the picture of mindfulness and peace. I am off balance, rushing, and my glasses keep slipping down the bridge of my nose. Yet, I decided that being mindful and spiritual would just have to look messy right now. Today, I rushed out of bed late, since I had been up during the night, made it to work just when the bell rang, and then found 15 mins. to meditate at the beginning of my lunch period. No, I wasn’t sitting in my special chair or cushion, in a Buddha-like state, but I did stop and connect myself to spirit, and in the end that’s what matters. It’s not about the perfect conditions. Lately, I’ll mediate on the bus, in my car for five minutes, at the desk for a few minutes. It’s just got to be that way. If I waited for the perfect conditions, I just wouldn’t do it.

I have to shift my perspective of what it looks like to be living a contemplative and spiritual life. If I lock myself into an image of what that means, which is not me or my life right now, I would just abandon the path. But that would be abandoning myself and the divine and I don’t want to do that. Instead, I decide to pray, meditate, and rest in my body with deep breathing, in my hectic, messy state of life right now.