How To Fit Spiritual Practice Into Modern Life

The other day a depressed client confided in me, that he didn’t know how to fit meditation into his life. I was a bit perplexed, because he usually was rather cheerful and very applied in his spiritual process. Come to find out that he had attended a seminar where the ‘spiritual expert’ said, that if you don’t sit in meditation for at least two hours morning and night, you are not truly meditating, nor tending properly to your spiritual practice (even though these kind of comments grind my God given gears, I did end up at ‘interesting, let’s look at this!’).

Here is my take on the scenario. Meditation is ultimately about cultivating awareness and staying in the observer-self, while your mental and/or emotional body, or the world around you might be going crazy. We don’t have the luxury in every life to practice in a quiet, serene, protected cave or monastery, so how about rush hour traffic on the 405, or the dreaded dinner at the in-laws house. We have the option of choosing to be aware 24/7. Can you be present, in the moment and focused on your breathing, while your kids fight and decide from that place what to do? 

That is a form of meditation. Adding prayer, a Mantra, some deep breath or a consciences moment of gratitude to our day is a form of meditation. Strengthen the observer self, the part that is objective like the narrator of the story, that has equal distance to your thoughts, emotions and physical self and that doesn't get swallowed up by the drama, but has the strength to lean back and say 'interesting'.

Sometimes more evolved souls, that have mastered the meditation practice within a monastery, do choose to test themselves in a more busy, stimulating environment, to see if they can find the peace and alignment there in the midst of the chaos and disruption. Even, if you have only a few minutes here and there, no candles and no altar, practice your awareness.

At the end we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, so your spiritual practice is being alive, no matter what the circumstances, or the lessons.