What happened when I stopped meditating

I got a son in January almost 9 months ago. This is, of course, very nice and a blessing. But it also was the reason why I stopped meditating. I know a lot of people are considering meditation and wondering what it could ‘give’ them if they gave it a try. So here is an account of what happened the day I stopped myself.

When a little guy like that arrives and your couple becomes a family, a lot of things happen. First of all you start going to bed earlier because you start getting up really early and wake up in the nights too. So you have less time in during the day to sit down by yourself, simply because of all the practical things that need to get done. Furthermore you need to put more time into your relationship, since they two of you must deal with a large number of new things: new roles, new relations with other family members, new demands for separating work and family time and so on and so on – the list is long. At one point I even argued to a friend of mine that when you become a parent it is an illusion that you are the same – you simply become a different person. I have changed in so many ways that, at that time, it seemed I had changed completely. Not totally true but the change is considerable.

The point is that all these changes, natural as they are, seemed to be in opposition to the time I could take to meditate.

So I stopped.

Maybe I sat down once or twice a month, which is like nothing. One core demand in meditation is that you make it a daily practice – something you do as a part of your daily routine. There are many different ways of explaining why this is important according to which tradition you have as background for your meditation, but the bottom line is that it just is important. Do it daily if you mean it. Make it part of your life-practice.

Since I stopped I have experienced an increased sense of stress. I became increasingly more difficult to distance myself from daily, weekly surges of tasks and thoughts, considerations and choices. I guess most people know how it feels when there are too many items like that in your perspective. However, I had just recently felt how it feels when you are not in that space.

This stress silently creeps up on you exactly like that frog in the pot on the stove. You don’t really notice it, but suddenly it is too much. Of course you feel various sudden increases in stress, but at one point I simply discovered that my overall capacity to deal with/ignore stuff is too low. Either my limit has gone down or I have gotten myself into to many things. Actually in my case - as it would be to most other people in this situation, I guess - it was both. My new job is more demanding than anything I have tried before. Even though I am on 75% paternity leave I carry the stress around for days. More and more details become obstacles in your hands, not simply because you limit you perspective, but also because you do thing too fast and loose touch with them.

This picture is from today when I had to hurry and get my headset for my phone out to make a call. I was really trying to do it fast, while doing a few other things – and the picture shows the result.

Overall I have recently been working to refind my alignment to the world. I guess that this is what meditation can do for you. Alignment. I don’t know if I am especially prone to stress or I just work in a stressed environment, because I basically like it, but I know that the meditation was one of the ways I have previously made a foundation underneath all the thoughts and choices.

Tomorrow I am getting up at 05.45 to meditate before the little Lauge wakes up. He is reaching an age where he is getting into a routine himself, so everything considered – now seems like a good point in time to get back to the routine.