This week’s contemplation — I have still been meditating — has been trying. Trying as in the way toddlers can be; trying as in I remind myself to continue to persist.

Sticking with my contemplative phrase has been this week’s especial trial.

I feel like I’m sitting on sticker-burrs to be taking the time at all — ten minutes! so we know it’s not the logical loss of those moments that’s the difficulty.

I keep pulling myself back to breath and phrase — fine, that’s what that’s for —
AND
I keep thinking my quotidian thoughts over under and through phrase and breath! It’s as if I’m not engaging in the prayer at all!

To stick myself back within the practice, I double-say my phrase: pulling out each syllable in my mind, moving everything but voice to speak,

and it’s still not enough. It’s not a reset, or oil to slick the tides of mind.

(How does this even work? How, when everything I know about brains says “time-division multiplexing,” can I continue to think two things at once…

as if I was folding laundry while talking, except it’s all words and none of them out loud/embodied?)

*

Prickly I stuck to it again today. Too, I’m pleased to note that my body rests evenly within the chair, all the muscles and bones feeling balanced and well-connected. Also, feelings may be factual, but they’re still the whitecaps over the deep. I remember: deep remains.