Hesitate 2 Meditate

The past week I have been struggling with an unusual habit. I have been getting up, walking around, checking my email, making tea, re-checking my email. My meditation cushion sits there. Eventually I get to meditations and prayers, but my mind is now filled with emails, news, daily tasks. I know that doing this ensures weaker meditation, less focus, and less joy and yet I still fill compelled.

This morning I woke up checked my email, fixed tea, and caught myself doing it again. Rather than waiting until the late morning I managed to drag myself on to the cushion for an hour. The feeling of my heart opening up overwhelmed me. Such peace and equanimity. All is right in the world. There is a feeling of God. And still I'm habituating myself into the opposite feeling by hesitating.

When I check and re-check my emails, read the news, and begin setting up my day, I do not feel joy. The world weighs heavy with details and duties. I begin categorizing, judging, assessing. My energy plummets. I feel heavy and slow. And this is the way I'm choosing to start off my day. It makes no sense.

After finishing my mediation I wrote theatre review for a website, ate breakfast, and left to meet friends in Staten Island. When I was on the ferry I opened up "A Course in Miracles" and read the lessons for today. I resumed reading the chapters and there was a section of "Littleness vs. Magnitude."

Littleness is the offering you give to yourself. You offer this in place of magnitude, and you accept it. Everything in this world is little because it is a world of made of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content you.  (Chapter 15-3, p. 306)

(Further down)

Yet what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you have judged yourself unworthy of it. (Ch. 15-3)

The Staten ferry motored past the Statue of Liberty. I walked out to the weather deck and I snapped a picture of it with my camera phone. I sat back down inside and considered those words.

My littleness. Is that why I hesitate and make myself feel bad? What possible reason could there be to delay joy and prolong agony except to validate a belief I'm not worthy of serenity. I see people engaging in some of the darkest gossip. What always strikes me about those moments is the unhappiness. Everyone looks so unhappy in moments of anger and envy. And yet gossip drives most of the media. How can something which creates short-term and long-term misery be so profitable? Perhaps people don't think they are worthy of anything except crumbs and leftovers. Bringing it back to my own responsibility, then I must also feel this way.

I thought about the tiny statue floating by my window. Millions of people have traveled by the Statue of Liberty and its an iconic beacon. It's a symbol of hope and freedom while traveling across the cold rough sea. A gift that has become an international treasure.

Continuing on with reading I reached the 4th section of chapter 15 on practicing the Holy Instant.

Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. 

 My practice needs a refresher. I need to remind myself of what I'm doing and the insanity of my mind. It's all a plot to get me stuck in the littleness of the world. There is nothing there but fear. And if the angels judge me worthy then why can't I see myself in the same light?