Sometimes it works to just come as you are. No preparation. Just pause somewhere and tune in. Don't change clothes, just wear your pajamas or old jeans.
Sometimes the doors just open. They call to us. Also be alert to what preparation you might like to do before meditating. Sometimes vacuuming, dusting, puttering, cleaning, is a good ritual before meditating. Water the plants.
Other preparatory activities you might explore
- take a cold shower
- read a poem
- ask your mind to give you a beautiful thought and write it down. Just write one beautiful sentence.
- put on music and dance freely for half an hour, then lie down for 5 minutes, then sit and be in love with life for 5 minutes.
Other approaches:
- call a friend and share with each other what emotions are moving in your body, fear, worry, anger, love, tenderness, exhaustion, whatever is there. Just share emotions, nothing else, to honor each feeling. Don't try to get rid of the emotions, just honor them. Then explore meditating, giving thanks for each breath.
- meditate for one minute and then create something. Paint. Draw. Dance. Write. Play music.
- tell everyone you are going to Be In Silence for an hour or two, and turn off your phone. Take a physical book into your hand, whatever actual book you have. Make yourself very comfortable and look at the cover while enjoying the flow of your breathing. Breathe with the book. Open to the first page and slowly notice each page, the physical property of the paper and ink and then let yourself fall into the meaning and feeling of the book. Notice how different it is to the body to read paper than a screen.
This weekend is simultaneously Independence Day, Guru Purnima, Dharma Day, The Full Moon, and a partial eclipse.
Today is a good day to touch the Earth, celebrate the Sun and Moon dancing around each other, and live in gratitude for the air you are breathing. It's a good day to renew your contact with everything in life that inspires you.
- read the Declaration of Independence and take one thought from it, whatever you like, and appreciate how much human longing is behind those words, and how we are all, in our own way, continually striving for freedom, to inhabit our independence.
