Momentum and its Friend, Routine
By: Jessica Burnham

As I sat down to meditate most recently, I noticed how my mind continuously does its thing of wandering about my mental ‘to do’ list. As a person who actually loves to engage in lists and mastering the art of organization, this is a typical thing for my mind to do. Every once in awhile I’ll get one of those moments where the anxiety of something I may or may not have forgotten to do sends an electrical charge through my nervous system and it feels like my heart stops. I will then take a deep breath and bring my attention back to my breath and let it go. Lately I have noticed that life, not only meditation is just like this.

I sit down to do work or start preparing a meal, and then my mind might wander and bring to my consciousness something I ‘need’ to do. There is always an email to be sent, a phone call to be made, or something I am supposed to purchase. After awhile you begin to feel like a clown in a circus juggling so many different ‘things to do’ you don’t know where to turn. I call this my 3 am wake up call. For some reason my serious anxiety of all the things I need to do hits me around 3 or 4 am. This tends to happen with greater force if I have not been meditating- keeping up with my spiritual routine. I’ll wake up and everything I feel is amplified ten-fold. When I finally get back to sleep, and wake up for the day, I look back and try to understand why everything seems so much more amplified and stressful during that hour.

It is like when you wake up from a dream, and you look back at the events of the dream and laugh at how crazy and scared you felt about something, when it was all in your head. And so it goes- how much of our life is all in our head? And what kind of routine can we work with that will keep us less in our head and more in action mode and the present moment? I notice that when I stick to a routine of accomplishing different activities in my life, I begin to build a momentum. The momentum grows stronger and it is as if I have a generated power behind me giving me extra physical and creative energy to really do what I need to do without so much procrastination and attachment to sabotage. The routine you create for yourself is a way to generate the momentum you may need to seriously accomplish a specific goal that has been a drain because you keep putting it on the back burner, and getting irritated with yourself because you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall for not being attentive to what you would like to get done.

We tend to look at things as ‘needs’ when they are always choices and what we really want to do. The way we connect to our most sacred selves is integral to this routine. If we are not feeding that sacred part of our self, then we are depriving ourselves of the deepest connection to our creative juices. We are also putting our mental energy into super accumulation mode. Like a snow storm that never stops- our mind will continuously build up drifts of mental notes and things we feel we need to do, would like to do or should do- and soon we feel buried in guilt, frustration, and disconnectedness. Feeding the spiritual part of our self allows us to cleanse all the big mental piles within our psychology and gives us the momentum to move forward with your dreams and desires.

How we choose to feed this sacred self can be different for everyone. For some it may be prayer, spending time in nature, meditation, even exercise. It is up to us to take hold of the opportunity we have as spiritual, physical beings and utilize this life with all the gifts we have been given. Our gifts are our way of helping end suffering in this world. And out of all the contributions we could give to the world, why not take hold of your power and gifts and use that momentum to give yourself completely to that sacred part of your being. Don’t let the mind fool you. We are all connected beyond the meaning we place on one another, and even if we don’t completely understand it- by trusting in the inner knowing of your sacred self- you will be able to honor and respect not only your own gifts, but the gifts of everyone around us.