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Meditation Rules
By karen | May 3, 2007
I live in a noisy house. Quiet time is hard to come by with 3 young girls. There is always high drama going on as my 3 daughters laugh and play and fight over who gets to play with naked Barbie. Yes, it’s true. Barbie has a difficult time keeping her clothes on. I dress Barbie over and over many times a day. Like I said my house is chaotic.
And I would not want it to be any other way. This is the life I wanted with children and family and everything that goes along with it. My house may be noisy but it is joyful noise.
But there are things that I thought were perhaps just too difficult to do because quiet time is so hard to come by.
I have always meditated intermittently. That is the key word-intermittently. And while it was nice and enjoyable I was never able to be consistent enough to really have some lasting and worthwhile results from meditation. I also wondered about the results from a consistent meditation practice. I would read things like “improved creativity, lower stress levels and increased clarity” and I would wonder how such things are measured. I mean how do you measure “increased creativity”? Something like that is subjective to the person.
I wondered about these “results” and I really wanted to develop a consistent meditation practice. Even if “improved creativity, lower stress levels and increased clarity” is subjective, it sounded good to me! Many of my favorite spiritual teachers recommend meditation and I decided that I really wanted some consistency in my practice to see the purported benefits for myself.
But like I said before, I live in a noisy house. I didn’t know how I would be able to do it. It is impossible to get into a quiet and meditative state when there is so much noise around. I also had some impossible ideas about “how and when” I should meditate. I tend to be somewhat of a perfectionist (okay, I have to admit I softened that with the word “somewhat”. I am a perfectionist. I think I need to recover!). In my own mind I had set up so many arbitrary rules for my meditations that I could never make it work with my children. My vision of the perfect meditation included me getting up every morning, sitting in lotus position on a hugger-mugger meditation pillow, on the hardwood floor, facing east (no not really, forget the east part) and enjoying a quiet hour of solitude.
Whenever I tried it I was interrupted with cries of “Mommy, Mommy” and little running feet. It didn’t work.
So I thought about this. I thought maybe I just need to wait until the kids are older and off to school. But that didn’t do anything for me now. So I decided I needed to follow my own advice and start “possibility thinking”. Rather than accepting the excuses for why I couldn’t meditate I started asking myself how I could meditate regularly.
As it turns out the only thing really stopping me were the limitations in my own mind. I needed to drop my arbitrary “rules” and rather than think about how difficult it was I needed to think about how it could be done.
So I considered my “vision” and my “rules”. Did I want to meditate or did I want it to be perfect? I wanted to meditate. So I dropped the rules about doing it in the morning. That won’t work at my house. I dropped the time limit, an hour is wonderful but 15 minutes will suffice. Basically I dropped all of my arbitrary rules about how it should be done and I just started doing it in a way that worked. Now the kids go to bed, I put on my headphones (it helped me to have a CD to listen to) and I meditate.
I’m pleased to say that it has been about 6 weeks and I have meditated almost everyday. I am also pleased to report that even in that short time my results have been pretty amazing. I am calmer. I have more clarity. I have more patience. Things that previously would have made me “crazy and upset” now I tend to just laugh about. I’m happier and I’m more joyful which is what I truly wanted. Everybody has challenges and adversities in life. Since I started meditating consistently I have handled my own challenges and adversities with more grace and aplomb. I have become more of the person that I want to be…happy and joyful, calm and centered, inspired and motivated.
My meditation practice now works for me. No rules. I just do it.
Related posts:
Barbies and Bratz and the Law of Attraction
The Power of
Possibility
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This post is included in the Living by Design Blog Carnival No. 4 located at Living By Design
This post has been included in the Meditation, Yoga and Spiritual Growth Blog Carnival from May 15, 2007. This week the Carnival is located at K-L Masina.
This post is part of The Carnival of Family Life-May 21st, 2007 edition located this week atBe a Good Dad
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Topics: Deliberate Creation, Living the Power, Personal Development, Real Life |
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I had a teacher who took us up to Harlem in NYC. It’s still a pretty rough neighborhood.
He said if we could learn to meditate there with the noise and fear of safety, we could meditate under any circumstances.
He was right. I also have a noisy house and, like you, love it. And it’s all part of my meditation sound!
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Yes, just quieting your mind in the chaos helps! I love that line “all part of my meditation sound!”
Thanks for stopping by!
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:37 pm
You know you’ve hit a chord when you draw a grandfather into talking about Barbies. The headless Barbie was very popular in my house when my daughter was young. I don’t know why, but every one she got she decapitated. We would ask her about it, the only answer was ‘Because’.
Until they were 3 or 4, my children had a problem with seeing me meditate. For some reason, they thought it was wrong for me to sit still, withdrawn from the outer world, and so they would grab my face or start calling me. I learned to meditate when they weren’t around or were asleep. The same thing happened with inverted yoga postures, so I did them when the kids weren’t around.
I’ll take meditating in a house with noise over a cave any day.
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Doing Yoga is a whole other story! But my 7 year old loves yoga and we often go to a child/yoga class. When I do yoga at home I usually have a almost 2 year old crawling on top of me. It really adds some resistance to my asana’s!
Barbie keeps her head around here but she is a nudist!
P.S. I’m going to join the ranks of Grandma’s next week! My 24 year old son and his wife are expecting a baby boy on May 10! Yay!
Thanks for stopping by Rick!
May 10th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Congratulations! You discovered the key when you accepted your life as it is and recognised that we make meditation work for us any way it does… Anmol Mehta has a great sound meditation on his site that might work well for you even when the kids are racing around. Especially when the kids are racing around… because the beautiful thing about meditation is that eventually it becomes a way of life - everything you do becomes a meditation.
And congratulations too on the impending grandmother-hood…
many meditative blessings,
Kara-Leah
May 10th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Thanks Kara-Leah, I’ll check out Anmol’s site.
Thanks for stopping by
July 7th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
[...] Karen Lynch presents Meditation Rules posted at LivethePower. [...]
August 6th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Regular meditation!!! I remember a time when I did that. No wonder I’ve been so tense for the last 3 years. On a serious note- Thanks for the reminder I really have gotten out of a good habit.
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
[...] It has been said that the average American will gain 7 pounds during the holidays. We all know that there is plenty of food around during the holidays but all of that food will not feed your soul. And too often we get caught up in the frenzy and chaos and we forget or neglect the things that truly do feel good to us. So during this holiday season make an effort to remember yourself and honor your soul. Do the things that bring you joy, peace and happiness. Meditations, Gratitude rituals, Yoga and exercise, spending quiet time with loved ones, even reading books or doing enjoyable crafts can feed your soul. Don’t neglect yourself this holiday season. [...]
June 9th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
[...] ******* Related posts: Meditation Rules A Simple Manifestation Life Assignment [...]