Every day now, I wake up naturally sometime around 6:00 am, which is weird because I’ve never really been a morning person. I don’t spring out of bed, however. I'm not that changed of a human. I usually read on my phone for a bit warming up to the idea of getting out of bed then stumble to the couch to get myself in an upright position. I admit that I do sometimes cheat and stay in bed, which isn't a good idea they say, because lying down connects your body to falling asleep again. Anyway, if I have made it across my small apartment to the sofa, I sit and start "the mind war," which is me trying to rope myself into internal silence with repetition. Right now, there’s a lot chitchat going on in my head, so getting some silence even for just a few seconds or minutes feels like success, and I'll take it. I have no time limit on this practice nor time of day commitment, which is why sometimes its 20 minutes at 5:00 pm, and other days, it’s 7 minutes at 6:00 am. The point, however, is to bring myself into awareness. I feel like I'm digging through my psyche for some sort of revelation, which so far has failed to hit me. I do think there’s something in there though, something deeper that I’m missing, and after my latest relationship rounds, I think it might be time to get in touch with my insides and see what I can find out about myself and my choices. I’ve been meditating daily now since the beginning of the year and at about four weeks in, it’s officially the longest I’ve ever stuck to it. The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that the mental chatter is loud during meditation, but calmer when I’m awake and present. I feel like for the first time in years, I can hear myself thinking again and I can even follow my senses. For the most part, they're not telling me anything revolutionary, but it is helping me to feel clearer and more certain in my day to day activities because I'm doing them from who I truly am by having eliminated the distractions.
I’m not a meditation guru, nor do I know if this will bring about any profound changes, but I do know that checking in with my body helps get my mind out of the way and, for some time now, that’s what’s been leading me astray. My body has been sending me signals, specifically in regards to relationships, and I’ve ignored or overridden them with my constant mental rationalizing and judgements. When I say signals from my body, I’m talking about the instinct in my gut, not the romantically rich pull of my heart. For me, my heart is much too mushy to be followed. It’s always wanting to believe in the best of everything and everybody, while my gut is the one that flips over when things aren’t quite right or gives me a hint of hesitation when something needs to be investigated or considered at close sight. I’ve brushed it off for so many years now, that I’ve lead myself down a path that I never expected, and I sometimes wonder how things might be different had I trusted my every instinct from the very beginning. I’m not talking only about big events here, but even, for example, the time a few years ago when I didn’t really want to sell my car, but I did, and then ended up re-buying an identical version of it later when I separated from my husband. I've lost not only money, but made many unnecessary life changes and invested time in making them, all of which could have been avoided had I trusted my initial intuition. What I can deduce from this situation is that one of the things I need to learn in life is to trust my wise inner wizard and if meditation can help bring me into greater consciousness while sitting on my couch in my pajamas, then by all means, I'm all for it!