Somehow, my meditation practice hasn’t been working as well over the past few weeks. I’ve still regularly set a timer for 5-15 minutes and meditated, and I would still say it helps me come back to myself each time. But it no longer had the effect I was used to in the months before. It felt more mechanical; I wasn’t as present anymore.
Especially during the 10 days I was sick, I noticed:
- More structured exercises involving a lot of visualization felt exhausting and left me drained
- The awakening in meditation (realizing I had drifted away) had much less impact and didn’t really help break thought loops
Taking the pressure off
On Saturday, I decided: That’s it, no meditation today.
To recover better, I committed to looking at screens as little as possible and to not working. No laptop, just occasionally checking notifications on my phone.
And it was really nice. I lay on the bed for hours, listened to soothing music in the background, and just stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts wander. I was simply in idle mode.
To avoid getting stuck in mental circles, I had a notebook next to me where I occasionally wrote down a sentence that came to mind. You could actually see it as a kind of stream of consciousness writing.
That really helped. I felt like many thoughts just needed permission to flow through my system to be released. The decision to not meditate surprisingly dissolved many thought loops. Afterward, I felt lighter and clearer.
And in a way, it was also a kind of meditation, just a bit freer. I put less pressure on myself.
The right practice for the right moment
Yesterday, I leafed through Paths to God again and found some beautiful passages where Ram Dass writes about the process of holding on to a practice even when it doesn’t seem to help at the moment.
He encourages us to listen to ourselves and do what feels right in the specific moment, not what we think is right.
"At one moment, one form feels comfortable, right, useful; at another moment, another form. Just keep flowing in and out of the forms. Use them and then drop them. They aren't 'it.' The point isn't to cling to one practice or another, one teacher or another; the point is to use whatever can in this moment open you to living spirit."
In the coming weeks, I want to pay more attention to going with the flow in my practice and becoming more adaptable.