This is part two of the adventures in Advaita Vedanta... will you travel with me a while?


Meditative Monday

Hari OM

Meditation is only as beneficial to us for as much as it is practiced. If we seek to learn a language, picking up the books and using the lingo but once a week is unlikely to yield the best results. If we wish to become proficient in a musical instrument, keeping it in the cupboard until only the day of the lesson does not serve that purpose. 

So it is with meditation. We must practice daily. It does not have to be long, but it must be daily. Only regular usage can familiarise us and bring any level of proficiency. 

We don't all want to be translators or concert pianists... but to appreciate writings in a certain way or the music we hear, again that regularity is what atunes us. The same applies to meditation. 

Then there come the excuses. 

Could not make time today.

Have not the space to sit.

Don't know how to begin...

Five minutes of any day can be found for reading the newspaper, but not for meditation. Space is made for all sorts of junk in our homes, yet not a square metre or a chair available is there for meditation. Despite reading and listening and asking how over and over, still this question arises. 

The biggest excuse of all - I simply can't control my mind.

Well, that is the point, my dears! The key purpose of meditational practice is to do precisely that. To make this excuse is to admit that you really have no intention of applying yourselves to the possibility of being free of the raging mind for even five minutes a day... 

Go away now and write down all the reasons you can't/don't/won't meditate. Then sit down for five minutes - anywhere you like - and give serious thought to the reasons that arose. 

Now write down your 'meditations upon the excuses against meditation.' 

There. You have begun.





No comments:

Post a Comment