I have started to meditate in earnest. Well...I am trying to. I am like most of the women I know: I have trouble shutting my brain off. I have found that I can Quiet my mind to a degree by visualizing that I am slamming a Door on the intrusive thoughts and images (which is probably a more violent image than I should be conjuring while meditating). Only thing is that after I finish meditating, my brain seems to flip on the four thought “switches” I normally have turned on plus two additional ones. So, I have a six lane race of thoughts roaring through my head. It is a bit discouraging when I can't get to sleep after putting in deliberate time to calm myself down for the night, but I'm not giving up.

I discovered something about myself one night while meditating on the floor of my bedroom. I was in the middle of a guided meditation by Deepak Chopra and Adam Plack when I felt myself drift into stillness (no I didn’t fall asleep; I’ve done that before and it feels different). As my thoughts circled the perimeter of quiet, I suddenly became struck by a sense of panic. I quickly opened my eyes and immediately felt silly. In that moment where I nearly fell into stillness something in me would not let go. I would not allow myself to surrender. It was an issue of safety.

Now, I knew I was safe. I was in my own house, the doors were locked with security bars in place and the alarm was set; my son was moving around the house preparing for bed. Still, when the panic gripped me, my first instinct was to get up and lock the closed doors to my bedroom and adjoining bathroom. When I closed my eyes again, it took me a few minutes to breathe through the panic. I realized that I had not felt safe because I had been on the precipice of surrender.

I have always had a hard time letting go. I'm not comfortable with vulnerability. It makes me feel weak; and I've got too much on my plate to be weak. But when I dig deeper, I realize that this is simply not the case. I am a control freak. I have learned that this is a condition one acquires when life has dealt one a few blows and the need to avoid future pain takes root. It takes a hell of a lot to unearth those roots, let me tell you.

The truth is that if I don't let go, even for ten minutes of meditation (which is my average after a week of practice; my personal best is thirteen minutes), I will crumble. I won't be able to lead my household, to get my son through high school and into college, and I will never find that community of people who are patiently waiting for me to get my head together so I can join them.

I consider myself to be a warrior woman. Meaning I take on any challenge my life brings to my front door; I make a way out of no way. I also consider myself to be a spiritual woman: I not only believe in a higher power, but I believe that divine spirit resides inside of me. As you can imagine, these two sides often clash. I know that my warrior self is always ready to fight and take on challenges, and keep the home front safe. And I've given that side of myself a lot of attention; too much, actually. My spiritual side has been neglected in that I don't always want to surrender to it. I don't always want to sit still even when I know I should. Usually when I go a long time resisting my spiritual side, I get physically ill and mentally sick.

The next night after the panic session, I did lock the doors to my bedroom before getting into place for my ten minutes of focused quiet. I didn’t want to give myself an excuse to stop. I also told myself that I was safe, over and over again. I am in fact safer than I have ever been in my life. When I felt the drift, or more accurately, the slow fall into quiet, I didn't fight it.

I have yet to fall deep into meditation (that I predict will take years of practice because I know the warrior in me is fighting this process like a pro), but the fact that I am even taking the time to sit still when I could find a hundred things to pack into those ten minutes before bedtime speaks volumes about my willingness to finally surrender. It is a testament to my current safe life.-MBL