Jumpstarting Your Practice
Q: I get great meditations in retreat settings, but my practice often comes to a grinding halt in day-to-day worldly life. How can I find a balance?
SALLY: Three things help:
- Make sure that you make time for at least 20 minutes a day of meditation, no matter what time you do it, and no matter how full of thoughts your mind seems. This will set the context for the rest of the day.
- Get in the habit of taking 2 or 3 minute meditation breaks during the day, when you simply sit and follow the breath, or give yourself a teaching like “All is one” or “Love is real.” In this way, you seed your day with remembrance of your goal.
- Finally, see if you can give yourself a Sabbath—a sacred period every week when you let yourself do a mini-retreat. It doesn’t have to be an entire day. For instance, you can make a point of taking three or four hours on Sunday to practice—not just meditating, but also doing some yoga, some chanting, or reading a spiritual text. All this will help keep you in touch with the deep Self, even when daily meditations have to be short. The most important thing is to remember that your goal is to continually keep yourself touching back into the Self. It doesn’t matter HOW you do it, just THAT you do it…
