How to Meditate - even with your busy life!

There's a famous quote by a meditation master out there that says something like:

"One should meditate for 30 minutes each day, unless you're very busy, then one should meditate for an hour!"

It's a pretty great joke, I'll admit - but what I don't like about it is that it can be immediately off-putting to those who are trying work a transformative practice into their real lives.  How do we integrate ANY contemplative practice, let alone 30-60 undisturbed minutes??? 

A major aspect of my personal mission is to debunk the myths that keep people thinking meditation is not for them!

Things like "you have to sit cross legged on the floor," or "you have to quiet all your thoughts," and this one above: "you have to schedule at least 30 minutes of silent time, and it's better if you can do an hour" - all are myths which misrepresent how contemplative practices work.

We are prone to fall prey to the challenges specific to us in modern consumer society:

• the idea that what it looks like on the outside is of primary importance (like sitting on the floor in special pajamas)
• the fixation on end-goals like "if all of my thoughts stop then I'll be "meditating"
• and most insidious, the idea that more is better

The truth is, as my yogic mentors have taught me, quality is more important than quantity every time. 

While there can be benefits to getting into a classic meditation posture, and there is certainly a type of quiet that can come about after being still for 30-60 minutes, there are also plenty of times when one sits for that long practicing tension.  In a way, this is kind of like anti-meditation.

The Tibetan word for Meditation is 'Gom' which means to "habituate" or "familiarize".  So think, which one is better for you - sitting for half an hour in tension and self-judgement, or sitting for five minutes in peaceful relaxation?  

With understandings like this, we can approach the practice of "All Day Yoga", which is a specialty of nondual traditions around the world.  In this type of contemplative tradition, the goal is not to go away from the impure world to find God or Emptiness on a mountain, it is to bring your heart fully to the world and find God and Openness right where you are - doing dishes, changing diapers, chopping wood, carrying water.

We start with small increments of familiarizing ourselves with the state of openness, divine inspiration, compassion, and clarity, but as these become more stable in us, the idea is not merely to carve out more time for leaving those who need us, but to mix and blend these inner states with care for every aspect of our lives!

If you'd like to learn more about this idea of All Day Yoga, it will be presented in the upcoming workshop  'The Dao of Relationship' - how to take ones whole life as the Path, but especially the art of intimacy as a potent spiritual practice.

When these insights take hold, we no longer need to worry about finding more time for contemplative practice because we'll be immersing ourselves in spiritual Work 24 hours a day, and reaping the rewards of it! 

You can start with 5 minutes per day or even 1 minute, but go for quality.  Eventually these states become so attractive that you'll want to find time for them just like we find time to eat lunch, sleep, or anything else that refreshes us, and just like lunch nourishes you for the next number of hours, so your contemplative practice will infuse the rest of your life with its clarity and inspiration!