Not long ago, a friend of mine shared that he had started meditating, and he couldn’t believe how challenging it was. I laughed and jokingly said “Oh c’mon, all you have to do is SIT there”. I was in fact just kidding; I had spent a lot of time doing yoga and meditating years ago, so I was well aware of how hard it can be to set up a discipline of useful meditation and stick to it. In my smugness, I had forgotten just HOW challenging it can be. The day after my friend mentioned this, I thought “wow, I’ve really neglected that idea, maybe it would do me some good”. So that evening, I sliced out a little time, lit a candle, and sat in a basic full lotus, taking a perverse pride in even being able to do so comfortably. I started some simple breathing and mind-clearing methods I had used years ago, methods based on that weird new-age amalgam of TM and Buddhist techniques that seemed to evolve some time after the 70’s. Basic stuff. And you know what? NOTHING WAS WORKING! I couldn’t get certain parts of me to relax, the breathing felt forced and contrived, and my mind? Oh my God, my MIND WAS A RELENTLESS CHITTERING MESS OF JIBBER JABBER. It took some work, and a little trick I learned in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now
