My second class is tonight.  Here’s how the past week was for me:

Walking into the first class last Monday night I told myself that I had to have a for-the-first-time approach to this class.  I was hoping the teacher would be appealing, say something magical that I’d never heard before, give some assurance that this time practicing meditation would take hold with me and I’d forever be hooked.

Well, the teacher’s an ok guy.  He says some wise things. A lot of what he talked about I’ve heard before; and here and there he said some things in a way that makes an old idea fresh again. There were no assurances that it would be easy.  No promises made about outcomes.  He asked us for a commitment to come to all the classes, do our homework, and wait until the course was done to decide if the practice was of value to us.   He told us quite frankly that if we did not have a clear intention to want meditation in our lives we would not succeed.

I felt the door out closing!  Until that moment I still had not been fully committed.  And now I think I am. 

My first assignment was to be mindful of the practice of brushing my teeth.  That’s not as big a challenge for me as the second assignment which is sitting daily for half an hour focusing on the rise and fall of my belly (a part of my body I’ve only recently come to accept just the way it is).  Every day I have to remind myself: This is not a contest; I can’t win or lose; I’ll never get it done; and I’ll never do it right.  When will I believe all of that???

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 12:16 PM and is filed under Meditation class series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.