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Monday, November 30, 2009

My Sabbath Experiment









Drop
Image credit: Photo by
adwriter on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

Earlier this month, I decided I was going to set aside one day each week for spirituality and health, a sort of personal Sabbath.  I picked a day of the week and made some rules for myself and set about my spiritual experiment. This week will be my fourth "Sabbath," and while three weeks is hardly enough to see substantial change, I have noticed some interesting things.


  1. It's hard to break out of my routine and not do my usual work. It's like the first time I sat in meditation and was there for about fifteen seconds and thought, "Ok, is this over yet? Can I get up now and do something?" I feel like there are all of these Really Important Things I should be taking care of and I get anxious and jittery about them. Which brings me to...

  2. There are no Really Important Things that I must do right now.  When I turn my computer back on on Thursdays, the world hasn't ended.  There haven't been thousands of items clamoring for my attention.  Everything was just fine waiting a day, and in fact, very few people even noticed that I was off-line at all.  In spite of this, I still worry that this is going to be the week that there really will be something earth shattering in its importance dropping into my inbox.

  3. I use sugar to self-medicate my stress.

  4. I haven't felt any closer to God. And because of this, I've realized that I expected to have some transcendent spiritual moments on my Wednesdays, especially given that I am spending much more time in prayer and meditation than on a normal day.  But I haven't experienced those moments.  So far my Wednesdays have felt like any other day (minus sugar and electronics).  I'm not making a judgment on that, just sitting with it and noticing what my expectations were and what the reality is.

  5. The day after my Sabbath is wonderful. So far, while my Wednesdays themselves have had difficult moments and have lacked anything overtly transcendent, they have acted as a reset button for my habits and my week.  The day after I'm a little more relaxed and a little more likely to do little things to take care of myself that I overlook at other times.


I've learned a little more and a little something different each week, so I intend to continue the practice of setting aside Wednesdays for spirituality and continue to observe how it goes.

This post was originally published at The Second Road.
Posted by at 4:07 AM
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2 comments:

  1. I love these posts, keep them coming!

    At first I was inspired to try myself and was sort of feeling crummy on myself for not doing so yet, but then, just now when I read this bit:
    "There are no Really Important Things that I must do right now"
    Well, being that I have a baby and a preschooler at home with my every day that, well, DO need to be dealt with *right now*, I will be easy on myself and cut me some slack. ;-)

    ? - when you split a post do you prefer the comment to be here or at the Second Road?

    ?? - what all does "meditation" entail? I realize that sounds like a dumb question, but I really don't know.
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  2. Melissa, yeah. My kids are both school age and there's totally a reason I picked a day when the kids are in school rather than a weekend!

    I kind of like having comments here for no good reason; they feel more mine, I guess. But I see them either way, so do whatever is easiest for you.

    There are tons of resources out there for beginning meditation, and there are different ways of practicing meditation. My friend Karen at Cheerio Road has a good post on how to meditate: http://mommazen.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-meditate.html

    When I meditate, I sit (either kneeling or cross-legged) on a meditation cushion the floor. I keep my eyes open, face a wall and follow my breath. I've been taught a few different techniques and I vary which ones I use. So sometimes I just try to notice my breath. Sometimes I count the breaths (1 when I breathe in, 2 when I breathe out, until I get to 10, then start over again). Sometimes I use a meditation poem by Thich Nhat Hanh ("in, out, deep, slow, calm, ease, smile, release, present moment, wonderful moment" -- mentally repeating one line on the in breath and one on the out breath). Sometimes I picture a sort of Buddha figure taking my breath energy and purifying it and sending it back. When my mind drifts I try to bring it back to my breath. I usually sit for anywhere from 10-30 minutes and I usually set a timer; I have a nice one that chimes, so it doesn't jar me out of meditation.
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