I was thinking today about how much I dislike meditating. Not the actual act, but the resistance I have to just doing it. KNOWING that sometime during the day, I should take out the time to sit down and breathe. Now really: how hard is that??

Hard. As hard as adult tonsillectomies. As hard as graduate school. As hard as anything the didn’t involve someone actually dying. And I’m maybe only 1/4 kidding…

Unlike preparing for my niece’s shower, I can’t seem to get in to the idea of meditation. Believe me, I know the benefits: health, peace, happiness. Focus, clarity, love. ad infinitum. But I still can’t make it ‘fun.’

So today, I read some on meditation. Wondering how to meet this resistance w/ compassion. Treating our own selves with understanding & sympathy is, as I’ve written many times, hard. But resisting the basic building block of Buddhism?? I don’t get to do that. ‘Just do it’ is one option, of course. That’s what happens many days. Still, I’d like to understand just why this is so difficult for me (even though all the lit says it’s hard for everyone, I’m sure I’m the worst one ever… 🙂 )

Part of it is that I’m not used to having time. I squander it, I know — sit in the sun on the deck, when it’s even a bit warm, and just bask in the light. Eat poetry, as Mark Strand said. Colour w/ pencils, bake, drink tea. Daydream. These all seem so very important. And so they are. And there’s time, now, for all of this. Which has never ever been the case. Maybe I can accept that.

Acceptance is the key. I need to work on accepting my unloveably fallible resistance. Because how weird is resisting the resistance, as my guided meditation the other reminded me? That’s what I’m doing, I realise (it only took me 3 days of resisting to figure this out!). And to accept something you don’t like about yourself is a whole other level of ‘letting go.’

What is there in your life that you resist? What would happen if you just said, yep. That’s really really hard, and I hate it. And then forgave yourself for feeling cranky, but STILL DID the thing that caused you all the crazy?

I’m not sure what will happen. But that’s my goal this next few months: let go of resisting the resistance, and just accept that I’m not happy about meditating. And still do it. We’ll see what happens.