09/04/2025
- “How to find time to meditate every day?”
I treat meditation as one of my non-negotiables -just like brushing teeth.
Every little counts - 1 minute is infinitely times more than 0 minutes.
“Finding time” really means becoming aware of how I'm currently spending my time and what this reveals about my actual priorities. What would I like my priorities to be? Which actions reflect these desired priorities? How can I realistically incorporate these actions into my daily life?
A morning routine has worked best for me. After waking up, I drink a glass of water, start preparing my coffee, take a quick cold shower, and then do my sitting meditation. I skip breakfast, preferring to break my fast at lunchtime. This is part of intermittent fasting, but also “gives me time” to meditate.
During holidays, my schedule changes, so I'm more mindful of finding a suitable time for meditation. I actively maintain the intention to meditate until I find the right moment.
I also recently had a profound meditative experience in public transport. The long London journeys with hundreds of people around you make for quite a unique environment, but that might not be for everyone.
- “How to overcome boredom when changing habits? Like meditating every day”
In my view, boredom isn't something we need to overcome; rather, it's something we can embrace. Boredom can become fertile ground for spontaneous creativity. To me, boredom signifies a lack of stimulation, especially when we're accustomed to constant external input. Nowadays, many of us keep ourselves constantly overstimulated through various technologies. Practicing meditation just for the sake of non-stimuli is what drives many people to do it in the first place.
Why do you meditate? The underlying drivers might be helpful to resolve the question.
When changing habits, there is always an aspect of discipline. “Just do it”, be like Nike, the goddess of victory. Yet, another perspective is to look for pleasure and joy in the practice. Be playful, you don’t have to be rigid. Change your position, mix it up, dance, allow yourself to make the practice work for you. Ultimately, our body is full of sensations, the boredom might be part of the key to unlock the subtle realms.
I would like to invite you to thrive to be bored, run towards it and jump into boredom as if it was the waves in the sea. Don’t resist it, be fully bored and see what happens. Nature of life is change, if we let things flow, we do not stay in the same state for too long.
- “How not to struggle? Is it possible at all?”
What exactly does it mean to struggle? Is it simply experiencing discomfort? Or is it more accurately described as our reaction to discomfort? When I'm hungry, I seek food, and then I eat. The discomfort of hunger prompts action. Perhaps finding food isn't always easy and involves some form of struggle, yet I feel like the struggle this question implies is the one of how we emotionally experience this discomfort. “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”. Is struggle kind of like suffering in this Buddhist quote? That’s how I read it.
This is a profound and challenging question. My go-to insight is inspired by the 55th Gene Key.
In many ways, suffering arises from seeing ourselves as victims of circumstances. On the opposite end of the spectrum is freedom - freedom from the need for external validation.
Where do I not feel free? Where am I trapping myself? Where am I playing a victim? Trying, agenda, confirmation of our painful story are some of the ways we make this happen.
Why do we do it? On a deep level, we might do it to know that we exist, as long as we suffer, we have identity. If we give it up, we become empty. From the perspective of the ego, that is terrifying.
The path is to lean into the answer of “Where do I not feel free” and flirt with the freedom in there. It is a path of letting go. You cannot force freedom; you have to let it unveil; you have to stop resisting it. The more you lean into freedom, the more you will see where it is not. By gradually letting go we can move from desperation to amusement.
In modern tongue: Shadow work and Chill.
