I don’t meditate regularly although I do try to take a few deep breaths when it crosses my mind.  I thought meditation was a special practice that I didn’t really know how to do.  But yesterday my yoga teacher defined meditation in a way that made me want to do more of it.

She said everyone has a story.  It’s the narrative we add to the things that happen in our life.  ‘She didn’t call me back because she doesn’t like me. They didn’t give me the promotion because I didn’t do well on that one project.  He purposely chose not to do what I asked.’

She said meditation separates events from our thoughts about events.  It lets us be and let it be.

It’s like we are sitting on a rock in the middle of a river and the water is rushing past us but we are just peacefully enjoying the moment.

Enjoying each of life’s moments.

Realizing that almost nothing that upsets us will matter in five years.  It most likely won’t even matter in five minutes.

But we marinate thoughts in our heads, running through scenarios, making judgements, taking sides.  We cause our fight or flight hormones to rage although we are not being chased by a bear.  We are just chasing ourselves.

So I decided to try and take five minutes a day to separate my thoughts from myself.  To silence the noise and just breathe.  I’m not going to call it meditation.  I’m just going to call it fueling my soul.

Actor Dick Van Dyke said, “When you’re a kid, you lay in the grass and watch the clouds going over, and you literally don’t have a thought in your mind. It’s purely meditation, and we lose that.”

Let’s get it back and mindlessly watch some clouds pass today.