Ideal

I’ve been exploring meditation this year. Since *checks app* March, I’ve been running meditations through Calm at least 50% of the month.

*Pats self on back*

As I write this, I’m in an eleven day streak. I’m trying to shoot for 14 but it’s a holiday weekend and weekends just aren’t kind to me lately. We shall see if I can prioritize it.

After testing out a few of the suggested playlists and practices back in March, I settled on Jeff Warren’s “30 Day Mindfulness for Beginners”. I liked his voice because he is so pragmatic. He talks about meditation in easy to understand ways, for someone like me who isn’t too keen on the practice. Some of the other practitioners were not quite for me when I first started. I’m growing to love them now.

I don’t know how to meditate very well. I can’t concentrate. My mind wanders constantly. Sometimes I just lay down and fall asleep in the middle of it. But over this 30 day playlist, he slowly taught me that it’s okay for my mind to wander. We are in training mode. We are teaching equanimity. Which is, a really fun, yet hard, word to say.

He explained what a home base is. Picking something in your body, or around you, to constantly bring your mind back when it wanders is really tough but it makes sense. When I sit in silence and relax, I can feel this light tingling in my palms. It’s my home base and it works for me.

After I finished the 30 day playlist (which took me around 65 days!) I got hooked on his Daily Trips. They are 8-12 minutes long and they calm me down and center me most times I listen to them.

There have been so many times over the last two months where I turned on the Trip and was blown away how well it resonated with me in that exact moment.

Today’s Trip did just that.

I have this ideal of where I should be. But I’m not even close to it. And it’s so disappointing in certain moments. It’s crushing. It feels like I’m failing.

But it is an ideal. It’s not real and it can’t exist in my world, with my very real limitations. I have to accept where I am in this moment.

I can aim for the ideal of what I want a certain situation to be. I can keep taking steps to get there. I just don’t know if I’m taking the right path. Saying or doing the right things.

But I am who I am. And I can’t be anywhere else then where I am. And I keep taking one step at a time to aim in that direction.