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Essential Practice 4

MEDITATION:

Creating a Safe Space

‘When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.’

PEACE PILGRIM

Many of us spend our lives searching for safety in one form or another. Some of us have looked for it outside of ourselves – in partners, in jobs, in families, in material possessions. Others have tried to keep safe by putting up a barrier between ourselves and the world around us.

But there is a genuinely safe place that each and every one of us can access. It’s a sacred space that we can enter at any point during our day – regardless of what is happening around us. In that place we find peace and we find healing. We create this space by meditation.

Like the habit of gratitude, meditation creates a new muscle group that will enhance your emotional balance and intuition while cultivating the resilience to handle whatever life throws your way.

Making way for the sacred

Most of us spend our lives rushing. If we’re not physically racing around, our minds are full of mental hurry. We’re thinking of what we ought to do, what we’ve done wrong, what we should have done better, what we’re going to do, and so on and so on. When we meditate we get a break from those thoughts. We create distance and the chance to connect with what lies underneath the bustle of our chattering minds and our ever-lengthening to-do lists.

‘I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.’

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

You may already have your own meditation technique and, if so, you know what we’re talking about. But if you don’t have one or you’re new to meditation, this section will get you started with a practice that you can use for the rest of your life.

For now, just think of meditation as a moment away from the rush of your day and the clutter of your mind. A moment of stillness.

Of course, stillness can’t be forced, just as healing can’t be made to happen. But what you can do is create an environment in which stillness and peace are fostered and can grow.

‘As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are and open up to other, more positive options.’

SHARON SALZBERG

When you get to the Sixth Principle, Peace, you’ll learn how to deepen and strengthen your meditation practice, and the Eighth Principle, Joy, will introduce you to prayer, which you can use whether you have a faith or not. But for now all you have to do is decide to commit to taking a few minutes out of your busy life at the start of each day. And when we say a few minutes we mean just that. Two minutes each day. That’s all you need to begin.

Even though all of us can manage to find two minutes, it’s quite likely that at this point you’ll experience resistance or even self-sabotage. You may start to find excuses before you’ve even read through this section. Perhaps your mind is defending how busy or tired you are. Or maybe you’ve just remembered that you took a meditation course once before and it didn’t work. Or that there’s meditation at the end of your exercise or yoga class, but you just fall asleep each time.

Be aware of all these rationalizations and do this exercise anyway.

EXERCISE: Daily Meditation Practice

This exercise is to help you establish your own daily meditation practice. Two minutes, that’s all. You can download one of many free meditation timer apps or use the regular timer on your phone. Leave it to the bell to remind you when the time’s up. Tell your mind that it can return to thinking as much as it wants as soon as this brief exercise is over.

Then, when you are ready, sit cross-legged on the floor or on a chair. Make sure you’re comfortable before you start. You can close your eyes or keep your focus fixed on a point just in front of you – placing a candle in your sightline is both helpful and calming. Try not to let your gaze drift around the room looking for distractions. Remember, this short time is about peace of mind.

Now just breathe, in through your nose and out through your mouth, slowly and gently.

Try to let your out-breath take slightly longer than your in-breath. Notice the gap between each inhale and exhale. Relax. Don’t worry about any thoughts that come – just try not to engage with them, gently returning your attention to the rise and fall of your breath.

Although two minutes may not seem very long it is enough to start creating a very important space and a very important habit. Remember that from tiny acorns grow mighty oaks.

If your mind objects to this practice, that’s great news. It means it knows it’s about to be rumbled. The mind likes to pretend it knows everything and sadly, too often, we believe it. The truth is that the mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master. It’s great at solving crossword puzzles or reading train timetables, but it’s not so good at helping us to find fulfilment or love.

So for just two minutes every day you’re going to suspend its operation. You’re going to ask it to take a short break and then see what happens when you give yourself just that small amount of time away from your thoughts.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t make any sense. Don’t worry if nothing seems to be happening. This is not about sense or meaning, and there is no right or wrong way of doing this. It is about very gently starting a new and vital habit: training your mind and body to get used to being still.

Each day, when you have finished your two minutes of silence, read the affirmation that corresponds to the chapter you’re reading. Allow what’s written there to seep in gently as you continue to breathe in and out. Then softly say the affirmation to yourself.

You might like to commit it to memory or jot it down in your journal so that in moments of doubt and indecision you can return to your affirmation and use it as a way of keeping yourself calm and centred. It will help you to recall your safe place, as well as reinforce the lesson contained in the chapter you’ve just read.

It’s simple. All you have to do is do it!

TIP: Try to meditate in the same place each day. Create a special place for yourself to sit, whether it’s cross-legged on the floor in a corner of your bedroom or on your favourite sofa. Try to make it feel special. Lighting a candle before you start helps to create a ritual around the process. Or you could burn incense, if you like it, or place a fresh flower in a vase just in front of you. Assail your senses so that your body and mind learn that when you sit in your special place and the candle is lit this is their time to switch off and allow something else to take over.

Before I started meditating I used to think, ‘When I’m in the right apartment, I’ll create the perfect space and then I’ll do it on a regular basis.’ Eventually I started anyway and then it became about the perfect conditions. I had to be facing in the right direction, there could be no distractions, the candle and incense lit, my legs crossed. Then at one point I was away working and had none of my usual crutches. I remember sitting on a hard floor in a fluorescently lit corner of a kitchen and experiencing one of the most blissful meditations of my life. Now I do it anywhere – in the midst of a crowd, on a bus, at work. My need for meditation to be a part of my life is greater than my need for it to be perfect.

GA

When I first tried to meditate I was scared of it. It felt like I was being put in a torture chamber where all the thoughts I’d been trying to repress would appear and torment me. But knowing that I only had to sit for two minutes made it possible. It might not have sounded like very long to anyone else, but to me it was a lifetime. Over time my mind learnt to quieten for that period. Just that brief respite gave me a glimpse of what was to come. Peace of mind and a way of being in the world without the noise in my head constantly destabilizing me.

JN

Reflection

‘It feels good. Kinda like when you have to shut your computer down when it goes crazy and when you turn it on it’s OK again. That’s what meditation is to me.’

ELLEN DEGENERES

Meditation is the way I achieve real, lasting change. I breathe in deeply and I breathe out, and as I do so I return to the present moment and remember the truth: I am a spiritual being on a human journey.

Action: Today I will take time out. No matter how busy things get I will create a moment to honour myself and the spiritual path I am on.

Affirmation: As I breathe in and out deeply I feel myself return to who I truly am.