Type-A personality meets meditation - ha ha ha

Okay readers - sorry about the lack of posts (like i'm sure you care) - but I haven't been feeling too much like writing over the last few days - overwhelmed with life and all that. So in an attempt to bring some 'inner peace' to my thesis-writing, garden landscaping, house renovating, baby-rearing self, I decided to off-load the baby today and attend a meditation retreat. it's a free day run by a man who is a sri-lankan buddhist - lovely guy - lots of inner peace. something i wanted to learn. now i realise that meditation doesn't happen overnight. but whoa - nothing prepared me for how hard it really was. we were told that we had to focus on our breath and to not stress out if our thoughts wandered but be mindful when they did.... to speak to them and plead with them to come back to us if they wandered - much like a small child - you cannot force them to do your will, but you can ask nicely.... so here's how my session went in my head...

breathe in.....
breathe out.....
breathe in...... i wonder if charlotte is doing okay with her daddy....must remember to pick up .... d'oh.... mind come back to me
breathe in....
breathe.....must get some more of those thesis revisions done before ...oh shit, mind come back to me..
breathe in..... oh listen to that bird... and there's a cricket... is he in the building with us? I hope not... oh crap.... mind come back to me.....

and so it went for half an hour..... well actually so it went for about 15 minutes - i think i spent the last 15 minutes of the session staring at the trees out the window..... hmmm, this is going to be harder than I thought...

so in the next session our teacher discussed barriers or hindrances to enlightenment... he mentioned 5... and I think every single one of them applied to me!! oh dear.... this path to enlightenment could be a rocky one.... and then we did some further meditation after we knew the barriers and had a few hints and tips to help us through..... i lasted even less time this round.... mostly because by this stage I had - if nothing else, relaxed a little..... now what happens when an over-worked stressed out mummy of a 6 month old relaxes with her eyes closed on a nice warm day - yep, she falls asleep - sitting up..... i did that whole jerk awake really suddenly thing before you topple over onto the floor and then look around really quickly to see who saw you.... thankfully everyone else was still busy meditating!!! *sigh* at that point i realised the futility of trying to meditate when you're falling asleep and I made my apologies and went home for a nap..... and so went my first day of attempting to tame the jungle that is my mind.... practice makes perfect I guess :)