Author: Ryan Klette

I get up every day and brush my teeth, it just happens without question. I have a whole life behind me to make it one of the most natural habits.  I miss it for a variety of good reasons if I don’t do it. Same can be true for meditation. I can approach meditation like I would brushing my teeth. Not waiting for the ‘right’ days or skipping when my mood is not right.  I notice the benefits when I  show up every day a little bit at a time no matter how I am. No matter my condition is the really important piece because being willing to show up for anything builds a capacity to meet life in a more meaningful way.

Staying connected to life feels better even when it means we feel things more intensely.  As Ken Wilber said, it bothers us less even though we feel it more.  The connection is the relief we are looking for and meditation gives us a reference early on in the day of what that experience is like.  Then we can notice how lost we can get  in all kinds of patterns and begin the most rewarding  project out there, waking up in the day we are in just as it is.

Practice tip: I think the best way to get back in one’s  practice is start really small but do it every day. Pick a time, carve out a space in your day, preferably before  you get going, i.e. after your shower, tea or whenever you can find consistent time.  Pick a min duration that is super easy for you. Might even be 2 min. Sit, breathe, notice, allow. Rinse and repeat. Let it grow from there, if you feel to do more continue but either way when you meet your minimum threshold, have mini celebration. Feel the feeling of having completed your sit. Let that build in an organic way. It has its own way, we don’t need to do anything other than pay attention.    

Try as we might, we don’t change with good intentions alone.  It’s actually impossible not to change. We are changing every moment. Nothing ever stays still. The question is more how do we change in the ways that we want. I am writing this with myself in mind, what I notice about my own internal landscape.

Part of the problem are my intentions because I am so often wrong about things so why would I assume to be right about the direction of change. In some ways its easy because outside feedback and inner intuitions find a meeting point. But perhaps in the most important ways, I simply have no idea about what I actually need and what a good direction looks like. For example, for a long time I thought corporate wasn’t the place for me to work. Turns out many years later I am happy to have corporate clients and work in an environment I once thought was unfit. In that frame I was convinced I knew what was right. What now then ? How might I be wrong about what I think I need or the direction I think my life should be going in? what does it feel like to relax the knowing? 

 It’s  often true that the part in me that wants the change is one who feels wounded or burdened in  some way. In other words the impetus to change is coming from a condition of the past.  It’s not actually a wish from an integrated self but rather an expression of unmet pain. A part that needs things a certain way in order to feel better, or a part that might be pushing away change in order to protect the hurt ones. 

When a wounded part is not in control, the Self is free to move with the world in full acceptance of life as it is. One would not imagine needing to give advice about how to change to such a self. Without the burden, the self is open and responsive to life and the change that is happening all by itself. That self can live  in the moment and be fully available to potentials that just weren’t available to the other parts. The essential point is that all parts need to be included though, (as an ongoing practice) in order to embody the Self that can lead. The Self that can trust life.  

The change is then more about letting go than it is trying to get something. To let go is to give space because space is what heals. It’s when we feel we have space to move that movement happens. As long as we feel stuck, it’s like nothing can breathe and if nothing can breathe we keep doing the same things, not learning from our mistakes and the mistakes of generations behind us. 

Maybe a better way of framing change is aiming to stay as you are. Big leap maybe, staying the same is also the kind of challenge we signed up for. Born into a world where we were taught to be other than what we are.

I think the hero’s journey is to come back to you as you and from that place, listen. So you might try this on for an idea – don’t change, rather let change happen by giving space to all of who you are.