It's all in the priorities..................

Yesterday, I was musing about the need to move meditation upward on my priority scale. In regards to myself, I am a believer in "shut up or put up. Translation........ If you aren't going to do the work to change the behavior, don't bore your loved ones with your woes over and over and over. The reason for this is simple. If something is of importance to me, I have always been able to figure out a way to make it happen. If it isn't happening, then I am either not ready to have it in my life, and/or it has lost it's purpose in my life, and needs to be let go. Did you ever notice how we have no trouble focusing on the things we place high value on? Case in point...................

I am not a huge television watcher, but I do like to put it on when I go to bed, because it helps drown out the other house noises and I fall asleep faster. A night or two ago, I was drifting off listening to a show on the food channel. I picked up on the fact that they were talking to a chef about his amazing chocolate. I vaguely remember telling myself to remember his name so I could check him out on the web. My next semi-consious thought (a couple of hours later) was that the bed-alarm was going off signaling that one of our residents was attempting to get out of bed un-attended. The next morning, (many hours later) I was in the middle of my computer routine, and I remembered about the chocolate. Within fifteen seconds, I had recalled his name, and was punching it into the computer to find his web site Chef Hilly's Kitchen How it that for recall? Sad but true, when I was thinking about my problems with meditation, I had to admit that chocolate seems to rank higher than meditation on my priority scale.

We all have things that we would never get through a day without doing, and we all have things (that we spend so much time talking about ALL the (valid) reasons we can't do them) that we never seem to get around to fitting into our day. Some things (like going to work, and/or taking a shower) are very basis must dos, executed to maintain our existence. (You're telling me you have never been stuck next to a stinky someone on a crowded _______ thinking to yourself "One of us has got to go!"? Once we get the have toos out of the way, the rest of the things we spend time on are usually the things that come easiest to us, leaving all of those guilt enticing items un-accomplished, YET AGAIN! What's a gal/guy to do?

I believe that first we should examine why something is on our list. Is it there because we want it there, or is it there because someone else wants it for us,or we think we should want it? I have found the things that are difficult and/or guilt producing are usually of the latter catagory. Once I truly own something, it seems to be much easier to fit into my day.

Maybe it goes back to being kind to myself, and loving me, even if I like chocolate better than meditation. At least its dark chocolate! The stuff that they are now saying is good for us. (I wonder how much that cost the chocolate companies...... To pay off the lobbyist that promote all of the food industries? Who cares who started it........A big thank you to whoever started this trend, and keep up the good work.) Heck, the way I feel after savoring a quality piece of chocolate, might even make eating chocolate a form of meditation for me. Maybe I'm killing two birds with one stone, and didn't even realize it. What-da-ya think?