A friend from the retreat asked me if I’d been able to keep up my meditation practice while we were in Tobago.
The answer is yes, and no.
The first week, I read the fantastic Breathing Underwater. One of Rohr’s observations was that when you find positive practices for your life, you should find that you need less of them over time to get the benefit, not more.
For a while now, it had felt that the law of level of diminishing returns was starting to apply to my meditation, yet I was afraid to scale back and lose ground. In the weeks before our trip, I’d gone from an hour and a half to 2 hours a day down to about 1 – 1.5 hours. I’d been keeping up with an hour plus a day since we’d been on vacation, but was trying to figure out how Rohr’s idea applied to my practice.
At my retreat, we had several evenings of authentic relating exercises. The day after the trip, we were broken into groups of two for one of the exercises. We took turns repeatedly asking the other person, “What is holding you back?”
“Procrastination.”
“What is holding you back?”
“My impossibly high standards for myself.”
“What is holding you back?”
“Fear.”
“What is holding you back?”
“Worry that I’ll disappoint my parents/partner/kids.”
Etc., etc.
The thing about this line of questioning is that if you go deep enough, you start to realize most of the things that are holding you back are in your control.
I have a theory about preparing for disaster when traveling with kids: Whatever you are prepared for, that isn’t the disaster that will happen.
I’d rather pack light and have my hands free to deal with whatever comes my way, than to have neatly packed baggies with special treats, toys to give my kids on the plane, and a fresh change of clothes for everyone. Bare essentials for a five-hour flight?
It feels amazing when you have energy and you’re getting a ton of stuff crossed off your to-do list, doesn’t it? If it were easier to keep a balanced perspective, those times would probably keep you going during the times when making even simple decisions felt exhausting and you were staring down your third day of laying on the sofa all afternoon because you just couldn’t get up.
Maybe that’s just me.
