Today’s meditation brought up awareness and wisdom around impulses, self-control, and finding the courage to trust yourself.
Saving Your Revelations (vs.) Being the Revelation
Lately when I do a long meditation, I find myself getting up and grabbing a piece of paper to write down little notes, takeaways, and revelations. Today I felt this intuition to NOT do that and not take ANY notes — to simply sit and be through the entire experience.
It’s been a recurring theme of mine to learn to be more present and work on implementing over consuming, which has been a big form of avoidance and procrastination for me.
What did come up, after I sat through those anxieties pulling me to “write down these revelations” was that … if they are that important, they will stick with me throughout the whole thing. Sure, sometimes some ideas are worth writing down (especially if they are “we should do XYZ right now!” rather than just a generalized idea/feeling).
But on top of that… was this notion that if those revelations and bits of wisdom can come up during meditation, then they can show up again. We need to learn to trust our intuition to give us the information and guidance we need, rather than feeling like we have to store/save every single good idea that comes up.
And if we can create those revelations then, now, and again, then that means that we (our hearts), in a way, are the source of those revelations. Trust that they will be there when we need it by being with that revelation in this moment, not immediately putting it down on paper and “saving it for the future.” Embody it now.
Defend Against the Impulses: Stay In Your Stream
I use my phone as a timer for my meditations in situations where I want to make sure that I am committed entirely to the 60 minutes, 30 minutes, or however long. Which means that it’s extremely easy to grab my phone to check the timer or look at Facebook or check for texts. The accessibility of distractions in my life is kind of dangerous and I am progressively working at minimizing or outright eliminating distractions from my environment.
But while I’m in my meditation, I enter a state of flow and self-connection that can easily be taken away the moment I look at Facebook or get up to write a revelation/takeaway down, or someone comes into my room, or… ten other common distractions in my normal life. It’s normal for a lot of those to happen, but many of the forms of distractions in our life are well within our control – we can regulate them if we choose and we can exert our willpower in the other circumstances.
I had this imagery of a small stream dug in the ground where a small stream could run through. Each distraction and succumbing to a distraction causes that stream to deviate from its path, leading away from that stream. I have to learn how to put my blinders up and, if necessary, use will power to block out those alluring distractions and impulses in order to stay in the stream where flow exists. Even if the small stream veers off course, I can re-center and guide it back to where it’s strongest.
The more I stay in flow, in that stream, the further and faster I will go – in anything that I’m doing, but especially in being self-connected and moving forward with the things that matter most to me/my heart.
Defend yourself and your heart from the impulses of the world, little and big, because there is so much value in staying with your heart. You must remain vigilant of the well-being of your own heart and mind and it’s up to you (only you) to block out what will not help you – or will destroy you.
Doing 1 Thing Now Is Better Than 5 Things I (Won’t) Do Later Today
I get the productivity reasoning behind creating an agenda and blocking it into your schedule. That is helpful at times, but for where I am in life right now, that’s not been a very effective model for me to live by (until I have the self-discipline to block everything out and stay on track – which is what I am working on).
What my meditation helped me to see (rather, remind me of) is the importance of focusing on this singular moment and doing the one thing I can actually do in the moment I can actually control – which is now. So it’s useful to have an agenda and a list of things that need to get done (desirable or unpleasant), but what matters more than anything is working on it right in this flippin’ moment. Get them out of your head and immediately dive in to ONE right NOW. Don’t keep planning and strategizing all 5 for the rest of your day. You won’t get to those if you don’t start on one of them now.
Even if I don’t get all of those things done, it’s a better step forward to consciously work on 1 thing in this moment (and even all of today) and get that done than to plan out 5 things and not actually do any of them. Progress over perfection, always.
And if I’m honest with myself, I can usually tell by feeling/knowing that I’ve “had a good day of doing/living/creating” — it’s just a known, within my body, on whether or not I’ve done everything I could. At that point, being in that state of sheer confidence in that I’ve done “1 great thing today,” is far better than doing 5 things “perfectly” and still feeling like I’ve missed the mark and not given all that I have to give.
So give everything to that ONE thing in THIS moment, no matter what it is: be present with it.
We Already Have What We Need (We Are Who We Want to Be)
“I want to be an action taker” is something that comes up for me a lot. I agonize over the historical facts that I do so very little compared to my lofty ambitions. But truthfully, there’s nothing I have to do (once or consistently) to “become an action taker.”
I already AM an action taker. I take action in other ways, maybe not ideal ways, but I take action. And even the “idealized” action taker I want to become is already a part of who I am. I just have to stop burying it with distractions, addictive impulses, and “explaining” my old limiting story.
It’s the equivalent of having a glass of water on the table. I don’t have to do anything to “get a glass of water.” It’s already there: stop strategizing how to get the glass of water that’s there, stop figuring out the most efficient path to get to the table, stop telling others that you don’t have the glass of water yet — it’s there already, just pick it up.
What I want, who I want to be — it’s already in who I am. And I can access it simply by accessing it and not letting fear and distractions cover it up. (That may be easier said than done at times, especially if fears and addictions are deeply ingrained – but at the core, that’s what I believe: what we want, and who we want to be, is already there and we simply need only pick it up, when we stop complicating it with our thoughts, what we say, and what we do.)
“You have everything already. Everything you ‘wish for’ is already there, it already was there when you need(ed) it. You just have to uncover it, or rather: stop covering it up in the first place.”
You already are everything you want to be. You seeing and wanting it is already an identifier that it exists within you. But it’s up to you whether or not you simply want to allow it to surface from the depth of your soul – and to not cover it up with your old stories and limiting self-beliefs.
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Photo by Micah Hallahan on Unsplash
