Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
One of the things I’ve observed about my mindfulness practice is that it waxes and wanes over time. At one point, that was worrisome to me. Like if I wasn’t getting in my full sit every day, I wasn’t “doing it right” and it “wasn’t enough.”
When I work with teachers, at the end of the course there’s often someone who guiltily names that they haven’t been able to incorporate meditation into their daily routine. What I shared with my educator group today, as we came to a close, was that one thing I have developed is trust in the foundation of my mindfulness practice. Trust that I will return to it. Trust that I can begin again at any moment, not by bullying myself into it, but by believing that each moment is when I can start anew. This trust is predicated on years of leaving and coming back to deepening my practice, and the belief that it is this moment that matters, not all the moments when I didn’t make it to my cushion.
We can always begin again.