Hello, Spiritual Warrior!

Developing and maintaining a meditation practice doesn’t have to be a struggle!

Let’s look at the basics – the six stages to create a present moment experience. 

1. Settling – the first stage is to settle in. Remember one of my mantras – Comfort is Queen! You don’t need all the bells and whistles, you just need to get comfortable.
2. Witnessing – once we settle in, we can begin to witness everything that is showing up in our awareness. Be curious and watch all that arrives!
3. Drifting – as humans, we have 60-80,000 thoughts per day – and they don’t stop just because we are meditating!It’s normal that we drift in meditation – to sounds, thoughts, physical sensations; these are the three obvious things we drift away to. Since a meditation practice is cultivating our ability to WITNESS, we can use this drifting process as a tool to simply drift back and forth.
4. Judging – here is where we get stuck! Once we witness ourselves drifting to and fro, we begin to tell stories to ourselves about our experience. We say to ourselves “I’m not doing it right, I don’t have time, this is stressful,” etc. Once we get stuck in judgment, then we have stopped having a present-moment, meditative experience.
5. Surrendering – this is when we finally decide to let it all go, and settle back in. If you don’t like the word surrender, you can think of it as Acceptance, or Allowing. However we name it, it is an act of releasing control, so that we can settle into the final stage of a present moment experience:Acceptance. Allow.
6. Stillness. Simply BE-ing. No DO-ing. 

The first step in getting still is to know that these are the things that unfold in our meditation practice – which helps us to understand that it’s normal. Remember that you can’t do this wrong! 

Thank you for joining me today – keep meditating, and I’ll be seeing you “in the gap”.

Namaste,

davidji