When Meditation Fails Us
A few days ago I realized that I’d fallen into a slump.
No verve. Sadness for lives and livelihoods lost. A sense of hopelessness at the timeline for all of this lasting and the uncertainty of the future. I also felt a little guilty at the fact I’d just yelled at my kids for something I can’t even remember anymore.
My whole me – body and mind – felt heavy.
I laid down, intending to meditate and do some AWESOME SELF CARE, and instead I slept. Right in the middle of the day, something I normally would never ALLOW myself to do. When I woke up, I can’t say that I suddenly felt like a sparkly fairy princess, but something had definitely shifted.
I had given myself permission to be exactly as I was.
I laid there some more, and I still didn’t meditate, because somehow I knew that if I did, I’d only be trying to use the practice to get myself out of feeling what I was feeling.
And I needed to feel it.
The shift that allowed me to pick myself up and get moving again was in ALLOWING myself to just be as I was. That it was OK to not be meditating – even though I was a meditation teacher – and that it was OK to just be lying there like a stump on a log. Or a lump on a frog. Or a bump on a dog.
Sometimes meditation teachers can make it seem like if we just meditate all the time, all our problems will magically go away. But sometimes our meditation practice can fail us.
- If we’re using it to deny ourselves the space to be exactly as we are….it fails.
- If we’re using it to make certain feelings GO THE HECK AWAY AND DIE ALREADY…it fails.
- If we’re using it to try to make everything sunshine and rainbows…it fails.
- If we’re using it to try and pretend we’re not human….it will always fail us.
At its heart, meditation is about getting in touch with our humanity in way that we feel safe and comfortable with. But when we slip into the trap of using it to try and make our humanity be something other than it is….our practice will fail us, every time.
Because in essence, we’re not really practicing meditation anymore.
It’s easy to get off path with our practice and allow it to slip into the practice of denying ourselves the necessary freedom to be ourselves.
I’m in this with you 100%, and I’m here to help us all stay on the path as best we can….check out our upcoming Live and Online programs here.
With love, Michelle