Breaking through the clouds

I hope you all are doing well. After all the travel, I am grateful for my routine and teaching my regular schedule this week. While I was away I did not commit regular time to my meditation practice and when I arrived home and resumed my practice it was a struggle.

Several times when I sat, my mind was full of dense clouds and with that came very strong emotions. There was fear that I couldn’t meditate anymore, and frustration that I was “wasting my time” with the clouds in my head that were blocking my thoughts. There was anger at myself for not practicing when I was away and a heavy dose of self doubt. These emotions wrapped themselves around a very powerful negative story in my mind.

This continued over a few days and I found myself looking for ways to avoid my practice… to do anything else other than sit with the discomfort. My emotions and thoughts had taken me on an emotional rollercoaster that all I wanted to do was get off of but as we know, when we pedal away from discomfort it follows and eventually catches us.

It took a few days of sitting with the discomfort before the clouds literally started to break. I could visualize sunlight breaking through the cloud cover and I began to notice the story I was telling myself. Noticing is the first step in our mindfulness practice. The second step is being able to “be with” what we are noticing.

With the “clouds beginning to clear” in my mind, I remembered that 4 things effect our happiness; Thoughts, Actions, Feelings and the Inner Sense of Knowing. What often happens is that we pay way too much attention to our feelings- they overtake the other three parts and lead to the negative stories we tell ourselves that are often untrue.

With perspective we can deploy all 4 parts; we can change the story our thoughts and feelings create, be mindful in our actions and truly remember what we know to be true about ourselves and the world. This connects us more deeply to joy and I am happy to report my meditation practice is back on track!