28-Day Meditation Challenge: Butterfly Land & Organizing Paperclips

Today, day 15 of the 28-day meditation challenge I notice anxiety and it feels like I am tingling. I hone in on my senses, the skin exposed to air, the cat that rubs on my arm that I imagine is a butterfly landing on me..oh that reminds me of this time in Mexico that.. oh, I am escaping…right, anxiety.

My good friend says that sometimes when we plan to do too much, we end up organizing paper clips. I think we become frozen by overwhelm. Often, when I am over-prepared for something, I can’t sleep. I get stuck in an energetic pattern of being so far ahead of the game that I am not even in it. In meditation, we have to be in the game. Today I sort of feel like I am organizing paper-clips, but sometimes it is like this.

Today I let my mind wander a bit because I felt tight. There was a time when all my meditations were like that. Allowances. I sat down and I pushed play on the thoughts, daydreams and list making. I recognize that sitting there is a job to which I commit. A job with no boss. So if I sit on the cushion and go to Brazil with the butterflies, no one will stop me.

The instructions this week are too allow emotions come up and feel how they manifest in the body. For a while, after butterfly land, I fixate on the coffee I will have after I write my blog post, which is after I sit. The craving for the coffee brings with it smell, that lovely way that coffee infests the nostrils; touch, the warm cup on my hand; sight, making eyes with the barista, who I am pretty sure is gay; the sound of the voices in the tiny coffee shop where I get coffee when I stay in Manhattan. It would appear that this desire has rallied all my senses. I am anxious, the anxiety feels tingly. Like hopping around a deep crater or abyss of sadness, which I realize now, I did not look at or allow. Good thing I get to sit again tomorrow because apparently there is more work to do.