There is a wonderful little spot in Santa Monica called INSIGHT LA. They hold workshops and retreats, as well as a weekly meditation night on Thursday's. By donation only .
The lovely Diana, newly invested as a teacher there, speaks from her teeny body about the difficulty with, and the challenges she still feels when it comes to quelling the many meanderings of her mind. People nod and share their own experiences after the 30 or so minutes of guided meditation .
WHY sit through the kind of suffering that only lengthy periods of forced silence can put a person through was asked. Diana's answer was one of my favorites I've heard this far on the subject:
As we learn to sit through just the frustration of sitting, we can learn to tolerate the many moments of real discomfort in our day to day.
We get more out of 5 minutes of a disturbing sit than 40 minutes of a blissful one. There, sadly, is no magic to it, no quick fix, just the practice. For those of us who say, “I'm just too antsy to meditate!” well, this one is for us.
Life sounds nicer if lived with more options for behavior. Seeing what we do with our discomfort is one way to integrate our options.
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