There is certainly no shortage of information about meditation. We can find instructions for mindfulness meditation, guided meditation, walking meditation, transcendental meditation, visualization, breathwork and any number of contemplative practices rooted in spiritual and religious traditions. There are apps to guide us, teachers to teach us and entire retreats designed to help us become better meditators.
With all of that information, though, I wonder if we have made meditation more complicated than it needs to be.
Yesterday, after spending several hours working on a manuscript, I put it away for the day and decided to do some contemplative housework. I loaded the dishwasher. That was my meditation. Meditation does not always have to look like what we imagine meditation is supposed to look like.
There is nothing particularly new about finding contemplation in ordinary work. Christian monastic traditions have long woven prayer and manual labor together. I also encountered this concept during my doctoral studies through Vedanta and the practice of Karma Yoga, in which ordinary work can become spiritual practice when it is approached with awareness and without attachment to the outcome. The work itself becomes part of the spiritual path.
I wasn’t consciously practicing Karma Yoga while standing in my kitchen. I simply needed to move away from words, memories and the computer screen and into something ordinary and physical. Loading the dishwasher required very little of me beyond being where I was and doing what was in front of me.
What Counts as Meditation?
Over the years, I have meditated in many ways. Sometimes meditation has involved sitting quietly or following my breath. At other times I have used guided imagery, essential oils, music, mantra, prayer, writing or subtle-energy practices. A walk can become meditation. So can time spent in nature. And apparently, under the right circumstances, so can loading the dishwasher.
This doesn’t mean that anything we happen to be doing automatically becomes meditation. I can load a dishwasher while mentally answering emails, replaying a conversation and thinking about the six other things I need to accomplish before lunch. I can also bring my attention to the dishes in my hands, the sound of the water and the simple rhythm of completing one task before moving to another.
For me, the distinction has less to do with the activity itself and more to do with the quality of attention I bring to it.
Perhaps this is also why the idea that we must somehow “empty the mind” can make meditation feel inaccessible. Minds think. Trying desperately not to think can become its own rather impressive mental activity. Meditation can instead give the mind a place to settle—a breath, a sound, a scent, an image, a movement, a prayer or even an ordinary task.
There are many ways in.
Take It In
This morning I found myself thinking about Take It In, Card #9 from my Essential Soul Care® Oracle Deck. The illustration I had created for the deck depicts a lotus at the base of the neck, an image connected to teachings I had explored about the medulla oblongata and what Paramhansa Yogananda called the “Mouth of God.” —a place where prana, or life-force, is received into the body. That idea of receiving, of taking in, became part of the card’s message.
The card invites a visualization of Source energy as white light, brought inward toward the third eye, followed by a wonderfully simple instruction: See what is before you. Your intuition is speaking.
The accompanying Soul Play offers other ways into the experience: basil essential oil, amethyst, the mantra OM, an affirmation and a journal prompt. take it in blog post None is presented as the one correct way to meditate. Rather, each offers another point of focus, another sensory or contemplative doorway..
Meditation as Receptivity
Much of daily life asks us to move in the opposite direction. We produce, respond, teach, write, caretake, problem-solve, make decisions and move on to whatever needs our attention next. Even some of our wellness practices can become another item on the list: I really should meditate today.
But meditation can offer a change in direction. Rather than asking what we need to accomplish, we can become curious about what happens when we simply become present enough to receive our own experience.
Sometimes a formal meditation practice helps us do that. Lighting a candle and sitting in silence may be exactly what is needed. On another day it might be chanting OM, inhaling the aroma of an essential oil, writing in a journal or walking outside and feeling the ground beneath our feet.
And sometimes it might be realizing that after hours spent immersed in difficult and meaningful work, what your body and mind really need is for you to close the computer and load the dishwasher.
Meditation doesn’t necessarily require us to leave ordinary life.
Perhaps ordinary life is one of the places meditation has been waiting for us all along.
A Contemplative Writing Prompt
We often begin with the question, How should I meditate?
Try a different question:
Where in my life do I already experience a natural sense of presence, stillness or receptivity?
Consider what you are doing when that happens. What do you notice in your body? Where does your attention go? What changes when you stop trying to create a meditative experience and simply allow yourself to take in the one you are already having?
There may be more doors into meditation than you thought.
Additional Resources
How Prana (life-force) enters the body
Focus on the Spiritual Eye, Not on the Crown Chakra
Daily reading from The Rule of Benedict
Karma Yoga—The Path of Dedicated Action
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