Day 20

Meditation comes in three stages:

Dharana, or concentration, or focus

Dhyana, or meditation, or expansion

Samadhi, or contemplation, or deepening

I’ve also heard “samadhi” described as bliss or enlightenment.

Here’s how Pema Chödrön defines enlightenment:

“Not being swayed by external circumstances as a total experience.”

Oh man.

How many times have you let something completely dominate your experience?

Sometimes, it’s fun.

I remember driving my friend around LA one time, just after she’d fallen in love with the woman who would become her wife.

I asked her four times in a row where I should be going, while she was moonily staring at her phone, rereading texts from her new love interest.

I think we ended up in Compton instead of Santa Monica 😂

Romance as an external circumstance, that’s a fun one to indulge.

But it can distract from the direction of your life.

I’ve felt that. I’ve fallen in love with men who have pulled me further from my purpose.

There is no peace in that sort of relationship.

It’s the small things, too.

Getting annoyed when the store is out of something you wanted to buy.

Feeling sad when you hear about the latest shootings.

Sneaking toward rage while stuck in traffic.

Have you ever felt entitled to be where you need to be, and annoyed that there are cars and people in your way preventing you from getting there when you want to be there?

Uh, yeah, me too. I commute to LA several times a week. There’s no peace in that.

(And as Sharon Salzberg reminds us, “We are the traffic, too.”)

If you don’t want your external circumstances to be your total experience, that leaves us with the internal circumstances, the stuff we can master.

Let’s work on it:

Hooray! This is a simple exercise to practice non-judgment.

Sweet! Here’s a gentle yin series for your back.

Glorious! Let’s hear what Dolly Parton has to say.

 Keep in touch, y’all!