Meditation builds muscle. Not physical muscle, of course. It builds energy muscle. It makes you stable, wise, compassionate. It makes your presence strong and it opens the path before you for clarity and joy in your journey.
And just like building physical muscle, where being consistent with your workouts is key, meditation gives you the greatest strength when you are consistent.
Many people find this difficult. They are sincere spiritual seekers. They are authentic in their desire for alignment with their essence. There is no doubt about their genuine calling. It's just that meditation may just be one of the most difficult tasks in the world.
That is, it is difficult until you find your groove. Then, once you build even a little muscle, it is as easy as ice-cream. In fact, when you start to love the process of meditation so much that you look forward to it, you will rarely miss a session.
Inconsistency comes in many different guises. If you find that you can't get up early enough, or you can't stay up late enough, or you can't find the time, or you simply don't get to your meditation practice for any of a multitude of reasons, this article is for you.
Here are three popular patterns of inconsistency:
Leap Froggers
Leap froggers are people who meditate regularly but they miss just about every other day. They are still more consistent than the other two types, and they do keep at it, but there are many days when they realize at the end of the day that they never got to it and now its too late, they are too tired, and they simply recommit to start again tomorrow. Which they may or may not do.
Blue Mooners
Blue mooners are people who read a book or listen to a recording about meditation, get inspired, and decide to begin a meditation practice. They do it once or twice and then completely forget about it. Months or maybe years later, they repeat the same pattern. They meditate once in a blue moon.
Some Dayers
These folks know that meditation is calling to them and they don't want to be leap froggers or blue mooners. They want to be really serious about their practice and they know they are not ready for that so they announce to the world that "some day" they will get around to meditation.
If you are one of three types of spiritual seekers and you want to strengthen your spiritual awareness with meditation, here are some simple solutions that you can put into action today.
Help for Leap Froggers:
Leap froggers usually have a specific time that they meditate and if they miss it they never return to the possibility of meditation until the next day. The leap frogger can increase his or her consistency by beginning to fill in those missed days with other, possibly briefer, meditation sessions at different times.
If you are a leap frogger, try this:
Sit down and find 7 different times during your typical day when you could possibly get away from everyone and everything and do even a brief meditation.Make 7 little signs that say "Meditate?" on post-its or index cards.Place these little reminders in the typical locations of those 7 moments in your day. For example:
On the dashboard of your car (Don't meditate while you are driving, but maybe you can meditate for 5 minutes in your car before you leave for work or before you come home.)On your refrigerator. (How about if you meditate for a few minutes before you get a snack?)On your telephone. (You can soothe your soul with meditation for a few minutes when you might otherwise reach for the phone to fill your time with empty chatter.)Help for Blue Mooners:
Blue mooners truly want the benefits of meditation. They believe whole-heartedly in the value of meditation and they are almost desperate for the results. And so, they get excited at the possibility that meditation promises but once they see that it is hard and that it takes a long time before they will get results, they quickly move on to the next thing that comes along that promises relief from whatever difficulty they are experiencing.
If you are a blue mooner, try one or more of these solutions:
Find a style of meditation that offers some immediate help in your life. If you find that there is true value in this process (rather than just reading about its value), you will probably do it more often.Find a community and meditate in a group with others. Even if you go to a class once a week, that will have more of a benefit than haphazardly trying this or that style of meditation every few months.Find a buddy. If you have someone who wants to start along with you, you can support each other in being consistent.
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