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Finding quiet Nearly every day begins the same way for me. A time spent in quiet: reading, praying, and journaling. I do this as soon as I wake up, before I can feel the resistance. This practice centers me. Grounds me. And it feels so good afterward that you’d think it would be something that I go back to again and again throughout the day.

But getting back to that place, to that spiritually-focused time, is hard.

Because the day gets busy and with every task completed, every problem that arises, my sense of self-importance grows. I’m not just a sleepy-headed human with messy hair and morning breath anymore. Now, I’m polished and thinking straight and professional. I know what needs to be done and I do it (even if grumbling that I’m obviously the only one who knows how).

In the morning, though, I’m childlike. I come to that place of early morning quiet without my game face on. I’m vulnerable and open. Sometimes I’m hurting or irritated, sometimes I’m content and rested. But however I am, that’s me in that moment. The real me. Not the image that I think others expect, not the person awake and alert enough to have put on my protective gear. Not the one that’s already running laps mentally with all that there is to do and all that I need to fix and do and be.

But once I slip into that other me—the one that everyone around me sees and knows—it’s challenging if not impossible to get back to the morning me. The tousled, childlike version of myself who is imperfect and yet perfectly loved.

Challenging, but not impossible.

It requires a letting go to get back to that place of early-morning peacefulness. It means that I let myself dream while staring up at the sky or while zoning out at the computer. It helps to have a certain phrase at the ready, “Help me, fill me, hear me.” And then to wait a moment or two in rapt expectation, for the peace to come.

How do you find quiet in the busiest of days? How do you re-center yourself when the pull of self-importance tugs at your spirit?
Labels: being present meditation musings work

