The 30-minute meditation challenge is a way to estimate the time optimally needed to integrate the events of our day, using the meditative process. Few of us have time to cram more activity into our busy days. So, the question of how much time to spend meditating is basically moot because the answer is none!
Slipping by us, however, is the important issue of integration. What does it mean to “integrate the events of the day?” An event occurs and changes who we are; myriad events occur, and we change in myriad ways. We never remain the same. As a result, we lose track of who we are because, without spending time in a meditative space, we can’t keep up internally with the pace of external events. In this sense, meditation is a process of integrating the inner self with the outer, so we can present ourselves authentically in both worlds.
Who we are is a fundamental issue that often slips by us as relatively unimportant in our busy lives. In the outer, sensory world, our actions delineate who we are. When I act like a coach, I am a coach, especially in relation to the people I’m coaching. More fundamentally, we are also the commitments from which those actions arise. And our commitments arise from values residing in the meditative space. In this context, please tell your Buddy one specific value you hold so dear that you live your life according to it.
Our commitments are also subject to change, which is one of the ways we change who we are. Can you put your finger on a commitment that you used to hold dear, but no longer do? In your present life, do you recognize a partial (or sometimes) commitment? Suppose a coach commits to being at every workout, unless… Unless he becomes ill. In other words, can a commitment be authentic with caveats attached? If we are our commitments, who is it that remembers them and holds us to them?
“Who we are is a fundamental issue that often slips by us as relatively unimportant in our busy lives. In the outer, sensory world, our actions delineate who we are.”
I believe the entity that remembers our commitments is the true self. This is the entity that sees our “oops, I messed up” behavior as being opposed to a valued commitment. It’s the mind’s job to generate an answer to the question: how do I make this right? That’s an important and recurring question because there should always be integrative balance between the inner (spiritual) and outer (sensory) worlds.
An event occurs in the outer world and the mind wants to integrate it. So, it plays the event back, deals with it, and eventually lets it go. That’s what the mind does: think about things. Some of its thoughts are insightful and inspirational. Thus, meditation is a way to connect our internal and external selves so we can direct our behavior more effectively.
At the core of our inner being is the fundamental, innate, mind of clear light. It’s the extremely powerful and dynamic part of the self that lives on after our body dies. It’s the part of ourselves that we access during meditation. It’s the part that we unthinkingly deny when we claim we have no time to integrate our inner and outer worlds.