Meditation Challenge: Day 13

From a series of messages sent to our 30 Day Meditation Challenge group. This one was sent June 13

What a roller-coaster of a week this has been on my end. Our goal of 30 days has sometimes (often) been the only anchor that could drag me to the meditation cushion in the midst of my private turmoil. I've been grateful for that. Though sometimes I think, "Oh no...another 19 days to go. What did I get myself into?"I have a feeling I'm not alone in my feeling. Usually once I've finished meditating for the day, I am grateful to have made it to the cushion, grateful to have kept my commitment. Sometimes not, to be honest; sometimes I feel just as worn out and worn down, just as confused, as I did before I sat. Yet I persevere, my faith in the process undaunted. And knowing that I could never let the rest of you down.

Here is today's quote:

"I can choose, and it is this exercise of volition, an...ancient potential of human behavior, that holds me accountable for the consequences of what I do. I did not set in motion the karmic stream, but it's up to me how I negotiate its currents. I can go with the current, swim against it, or seek a shoreline, but the currents and eddies of the stream are forever shifting and leave me no option but to continually decide what to do. My choices bear upon the stream itself, for it is a mutual stream in which all of creation swims. I can do nothing that will not affect you. You can do nothing that will not affect me. We are awash together, bound in such intricate and binding reciprocity that if anything moves, all moves."

--from "Ten Thousand Mistakes", by Lin Jensen, Shambhala Sun, March 2007

Talk to you...very soon!