STICK TO IT!

I discovered meditation long before I knew what mediation was. Sometimes, trying to fall asleep, I found myself focusing on a spot just past my nose. I always found it suddenly and it felt as if my whole scalp tipped forward. In a sense it did tip forward - into a focus that calmed my mind and centered me. I called it thinking with the front of my head.
     That may be why the first "official" time I meditated I had a very good experience - I closed my eyes, focused on a spot at the end of my nose, breathed in and out and stayed motionless for the hour we sat. My mind calmed down after about twenty minutes and there were moments when it was as if my mind was in front of me, hanging out for an airing.
      I went home determined to begin a consistent practice. I set an alarm for forty-five minutes, sat down and began. It did not go well. I felt an intense restlessness, a barely resisted desire to open my eyes and get up. I knew enough to try to focus on the restlessness, to soften it, to remind myself that it was only a feeling passing through. I managed to stay seated and hoped the next time would be better.
     It wasn't. The restlessness, the desire to leap off the cushion, grew even more intense. I stayed seated - I understood that meditation for me was now solely about the discipline of sitting for the time I said I would. After what in my memory was a few weeks but may have been only a few days, the restlessness reached a fever pitch. I felt as if I had swallowed another creature who was battling inside my skin, pushing out the outline of its arms and legs as if we were in a cartoon.
     Then just at the moment I thought I had to give in to the restlessness or spin off into space, the bubble burst, the fever broke. As if a switch had clicked, the restlessness was gone. I felt calm, centered, able to sit until the alarm went off. 
     I think of that experience often; I see it as a process for every aspect of my life. Don't run, stay with discipline, keep to your commitment. But perfection will never be my strong suit. I don't make it much of the time. At least I keep trying.