reflections on 9 years of devoted daily meditation practice

This January 1, 2025 marked 9 years of daily devoted meditation practice for me! I began on January 1, 2016... and I am eternally grateful to myself for making that commitment.

Meditation supported me in healing from a very difficult and harmful year that was 2015, and it has since continued to be an anchor in my life. I was in such a bad place emotionally and spiritually that I knew I had to commit to looking at it all, and sitting with it all, on a regular basis. So, I just started... no questions asked. Every morning and every night, I would sit, close my eyes and focus on whatever was alive for me in that unique moment.

To simply sit, and to witness. To feel.

This practice has continued and has been crucial, really... the investment in time and devotion has been more than worth it; the practice has been a stabilizing anchor throughout the many waves of life. I have found that the consistency of the sitting practice creates a container, a cauldron, a space, for inner healing and inner alchemy. There is a natural transformation that happens when we make room for everything.

One of the biggest things I've recognized as a result of this consistent meditation practice is that there is a lot that comes and goes within life. Thoughts, emotions, sensations all rise and fall with the continued ebbing and flowing of my being.

The more I have sat, the more I have recognized the consistent aware witness within who is without characteristics, and who remains steady and constant through all of the changes.

The awareness remains, while all else changes around it and before my very eyes. Even just in one meditation practice many thoughts and feelings arise and fall, and here I Am, simply witnessing it all. The same awareness that has always been here watching.

This consistent connection with the stable I Am presence created for me a level of acceptance for life's ups and downs. It has grown within me a particular resilience that knows that whatever is alive at present is likely to change and transform in some way. This relatively constant shifting makes it even more valuable to feel it all and go as deeply as possible into what's alive: feeling fully, knowing it's lessons will be felt in some way, and then it may go. Or, perhaps it takes a different kind of seat in my mind. It's kind of like rearranging furniture, or digesting food. These energies move, and flow. Some stay longer, some pass quickly.

In meditation I am tasked with the question: can I flow with it?

Sometimes it's easier than other times. Sometimes experiences, thoughts or energies are simply hard to digest... hard to even hold or sit with. And so, I allow myself to flow with that discomfort, too, while I give effort to wrapping the arms of my awareness around this unsightly energetic package within. Sometimes, it just needs to be witnessed to transform, while other times, it needs a good long time to steep. Sometimes I sit with things for days, steeping, gaining insight into them, seeing them from different angles before they begin to show why they're there or how they're going to transform. It really is like Rumi's guesthouse...

"This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house empty of

its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because

each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

Meditation is like that, to me. And, the more I have welcomed all the different layers of my experience, the more I have welcomed even the dark thoughts and the deep sorrows, the more I have felt whole and integrated in myself. Each guest receives a spot at the table, welcomed with tea, attention, love... It's not always easy, by any means. To have these various guests. But... in meditation we can know ourselves as the witness, and thus know them truly to be guests, and teachers. Thus we are blessed ultimately by what they bring, and what they show us about life, death, light, dark, and the paradoxes of human life.

Blessed meditations, friends.

~Alexandra