In meditation this week, I noticed something mildly annoying:
I’m not getting answers to my questions.
Or maybe I am getting answers, but apparently Spirit has decided that straightforward communication is overrated.
It feels a little like a giant baseball bat hovering over my head. Either my spirit guides are giving me their version of a blank stare, or they’re answering me and I’m completely failing to connect the dots.
And I think I’m starting to understand why.
The dots I’m trying to connect are on two completely different planes.
More on that later.
Because lately I’ll go into meditation with a perfectly reasonable question like:
“What am I supposed to do with my career?”
And the answer I get is something along the lines of:
“Practice meditating toward enlightenment.”
Um.
Thanks, cheeky Universe.
Not exactly the five-step career plan I was hoping for.
But today I heard something during meditation that stopped me:
“Ego wants to keep me in turmoil, asking the same questions and staying stuck.”
Now, I’m using the word ego here because I don’t quite have the right word for what I mean yet.
Ego is close enough for now.
And before you think, Well, I’m a nice person. I’m selfless. I don’t have some enormous ego running around ruining my life…
Yeah.
I thought I had mine pretty well under control too.
Then BAM.
Apparently when you start poking around inside yourself on THIS path, ego has fewer and fewer places to hide.
Sneaky little thing.
For me, ego isn’t just arrogance or thinking you’re better than everybody else.
It’s also all those automatic things we think and do without ever stopping to examine them.
Our reactions.
Our avoidance.
Our assumptions.
And—oh yes—our habits.
Which led me to a question I didn’t particularly want to answer:
What did I reach for today instead of meditating?
Ohhhhh, my list is long.
We have entertainment galore in this house. Technology. Snacks. Pets. Hobbies. Chores.
I can suddenly become VERY interested in doing something that absolutely did not need doing five minutes earlier.
Funny how that works.
And none of those things are bad.
I love my hobbies. I love my pets. Sometimes the laundry really does need to be done.
But sometimes we’re not reaching for those things because we genuinely want them.
Sometimes we’re reaching for them because we don’t want something else.
So I started asking myself a different question:
Why do I NOT want to meditate?
More specifically:
What is interfering with my joy and eagerness to hear from Spirit?
And that question gets interesting.
Because there might be something underneath the habit.
Maybe:
I don’t want to hear “no.”
Or:
I don’t want another message I have to spend three days trying to decipher.
Or:
If I hear something clearly, then I’ll be responsible for actually doing something about it.
Or even:
What if I hear absolutely nothing and start wondering what’s wrong with me?
And one of mine surprised me:
I don’t want to cry right now.
Because apparently meditation has also become my regularly scheduled appointment for ugly crying.
Not the graceful single-tear-sliding-down-the-cheek kind, either.
I mean bawling.
During meditation.
After meditation.
Sometimes for a while.
I sincerely hope this is not a lifelong feature of spiritual enlightenment because I am going to need to buy tissues in bulk.
But that’s the interesting part.
The thing I thought was simply:
“I don’t feel like meditating right now.”
…wasn’t necessarily that at all.
There was something underneath it.
And maybe that’s true of some of the other places where I feel stuck, too.
Maybe going in circles isn’t always because we don’t know what to do next.
Maybe sometimes we do know.
But we’ve gotten very good at reaching for something else before we have to find out what’s waiting underneath.
