Here’s some good encouragement for the group from Day 18 of Wildmind’s 28 Day Meditation Challenge. Jeff
“(Sometimes) ideals can get in the way of practice. When we have the expectation that we “should” meditate for, say, 30 minutes or 40 minutes, then sometimes, when we find we only have 5, or 10, or 15 minutes for meditation, we think it’s not worthwhile. “It’s too short; why bother?” So we end up not meditating that day. And if we have a string of busy days, we might start getting out of the habit of sitting daily.
This is a case of the ideal being the enemy of the good. It’s far better to do even 10 minutes of meditation than to do no meditation. And it’s far better to keep sitting on a daily basis by doing short sits than it is to lose the momentum of our practice, waiting for the opportunity to do longer sits.
So when times get tough, I advocate “meditation snacks.” Not meditating because you don’t have time to do what you think of as a full-length sitting is like passing up on a snack when you’re hungry because it’s not a full meal. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.
There have been days when I’ve only been able to meditate for a few minutes, late at night, just before going to bed, but at least I’ve been able to have a few minutes of uninterrupted sitting.
It’s not ideal, by any means, but when ideals stop you from meditating, they need to be quietly set aside so that you can just get on with practicing.”