On Meditation

Pond Flowers on Jensen Lake, Apple Valley, MN

I have been meditating on and off for twenty years.  I know that it is what helps give me balance, peace and clarity.  I know that it brings me closer to my Higher Power.  

When I was 27 years old, I was a single parent, living at my mom's with a one-year old son.  I was quite lost and had only begun to have some clarity after giving birth and caring for this new human being.  It was as if God came down and said to me, "Now, you will learn what love is all about."  

Things began to come to me.  Books, people, prayer and meditation.  It just started happening.  An older friend, mentor  gave me a book called, "Ask Your Angels".  I started praying to the angels daily.  I met a old Chinese man named Clem Chang who taught me QiGong and began to do the microcosmic orbit meditation.  I picked up Marianne Williamson's, "A Return to Love" and Gary Zukav's book, "The Seat of the Soul"- I read and the words spoke to me.  

I continued to meditate and then one day a voice said, "It's about learning to love yourself.  You need to love yourself first before anyone can ever love you or you can ever give TRUE love."  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  It was true, I NEVER loved myself.  The concept was foreign to me. What did that mean?  All my life I had been looking for someone to love me, looking for approval, my father's, my mother's...I was never good enough.  The voice spoke loud and strong over and over during this time in my life.  "You are perfect the way you are.  You are worthy of self-love."  

I remember in college, I used to have these dreams of being unconditionally loved...complete, fulfilling, true love.  They were the BEST dreams.  The kind that you never want to wake from.  It came in the form of David Letterman (it could be that because I would stay up to watch The Letterman Show that he was the last thing in my head).  He was the person who loved me.  Loved me for who I was, loved for who I had been and loved me...completely.  It was like he showed me what it felt like to be filled with self-love because through his loving me, I  loved me!  I always say it was "David Letterman as God."

I'm 45 now and still trying to meditate.  Through yoga, it has been reaffirmed that it is something that I need to practice.  Most days I meditate in the morning, getting in 5-20 minutes of sitting or chanting or reading and then reflecting.  I like variety.  I find that evenings are more difficult  to fit it in.  My two boys are now 13 and 19 and then stay up late.  There is no more quiet time for mom in the evenings.  It is also the time that my husband and I connect and although I could say, "Hey honey, sorry, not now, I need to meditate," and he would understand, I am not there yet.  I am usually too tired and I am lucky if I say a quick prayer while I am laying under the covers quickly drifting into sleep.  

My goal is to meditate a half an hour in the morning and a half and hour in the evening.  If I can't reach that all the time the other thing that I am practicing in just being in the present.  In yoga, this is the practice of dharana, learning to focus the mind and bring it into the present on a regular basis.  The only time that exists is now and in this moment I can choose my path.  I choose self-love as I know that is the only way.  I need constant reminders, I am only human.   In this moment, I do the best I can.