Meditate every day for 43 days

At some point last week I started to feel like timing my meditations was… I don’t know… keeping me from becoming one with the universe. How is the moment before I start timing or the moment after I stop timing any less meditative and sacred than the ones I timed? So I stopped timing my meditations, or posting the times on this site. It was like all my time was meditation time—and none of it was. I became much less intentional about the whole thing. And then one day I realized I hadn’t even thought about this goal for several days.

So now I realize that I need to be intentional about setting aside time for meditation: beginning and ending with some kind of action to mark the time (it could be looking at the clock, or something else). All my other time can be sacred and meditative as well, but I need to set aside some special time just for this.

So I’ll start this goal over sometime soon; not sure if I’ll start today or wait a while.

Day 14 (Friday): 22 minutes
Day 15 (Saturday): 11 minutes
Day 16 (Sunday): Don’t remember how long it was, but I did it!
Day 17 (Monday): 5 minutes
Day 18 (Tuesday): 12 minutes
Day 19 (Wednesday): 11 minutes
Day 20 (Thursday): Done. But I didn’t even try to keep track of the time

Day 8: 15 minutes; feeling angry when I started but that dissipated over time
Day 9: 15 minutes
Day 10: 20 minutes
Day 11: 15 minutes; feeling restless
Day 12: 20 minutes; feeling a little distractable
Day 13: 3 minutes. (It felt like all I could do, to even do that)

Day 4: 20 minutes
Day 5: 12 minutes
Day 6: 2.5 hours (including the nap that ensued)
Day 7: 27 minutes

And the 43rd day is New Year’s day. What a perfect way to ensure I take a little time for myself during the busy holiday season!

I really needed that today!

My iPod said it had been playing for 21 minutes… but it didn’t seem like that long. Maybe it just continued from where I left off yesterday, which would make today about 6 minutes.

Either way, I am really enjoying coming back to this practice.

This time I turned on all the lights in the bedroom and laid on top of the covers with my eyes open. In the middle, not on the side I normally sleep. All this to send the message to my body, hopefully loud and clear, that this relaxation time is different from SLEEP time.

That worked out great; I felt some emotions bubbling to the surface that I hadn’t noticed before, and a sense of joy and well-being when I was done.

Now I just have to keep it up for the next 42 days.

That’s called going to bed early.

Anyway, I have been doing that a lot lately.