When I started practicing meditation, then teaching about it, I found one of the hardest things to do was to sit with myself.  The plague of anxious thoughts–the past! the future! self-doubt!

Allowing these thoughts to flow through my consciousness like leaves on a rolling river is still, and always be, the science and art of self-compassion.  The barriers to meditation are all about that over-protective, judgmental, hyper-alert mind warning me that I’m not doing it right.  Instantly I am distracted with struggle to be better.

What if there is no “better”?  Just now.  The now, finding the now, returning to the now, is precious.  Right here, right now all is excellent.  And then another now.  In silence I find the Divine inside of me smiling.