I recently read The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz wherein he suggested that body types like myself need “stillness” to enable deep spiritual growth (I’m a one with a strong two wing). It turns out that sitting in meditation while chanting along a mala, counting my breath on my fingers, or praying along a rosary (all things I like to do and that have helped me immensely over the years) is not the same thing as truly being ‘still.’ Stillness it turns out, is truly the act of just being. Not something that I am particularly good at.

Heuertz recommended centering prayer as a way to practice, which is still a little doing, but not much. I’m not good at just ‘being,’ and I suspect that is true for quite a lot of us, not just the eights, nines, and ones of the enneagram. We respond to the query of ‘how are you’ by saying ‘busy,’ we are encouraged to multi-task and stack activities, we are all achieving and climbing and doing quite a lot. I do some of this, I resist some of it, but the truth is, if I’m not ‘doing’ something I feel like I’m not contributing, not providing, not growing, not enough. Maybe you feel like this too?

I can see that my meditation practice has been similar; it has not been bad and it has not been disingenuous, but maybe it has been a little busy. For the last few days I have been trying something new in that part of my morning: I have just been sitting for a little while after I do the other pieces of my spiritual time. It’s really hard. I want to acknowledge that because as a spiritual director I encourage other people in this practice and I know it is hard to sit in quiet, stillness, externally unproductive time. Sitting, even when you are doing something like chanting can be hard, but just sitting and hoping the bell timer on the phone didn’t turn off, or keeping the grocery list at bay, or not jumping to the next thing you have to do, say, write as soon as you can get up… well you get the idea. It’s hard. And it is okay that it is hard; it gets easier.

I write a lot about how to start spiritual practices; it is the starting that can be the hardest because the ‘standard’ can feel so far away. Heuertz recommended starting with twenty minutes twice a day and I audibly laughed as I read that – and I do this as a teacher! I’ve had a contemplative practice for years and I can do about fifteen minutes before my body starts to fidget. That’s not bad, it’s real life for most people, and it doesn’t mean you should chuck it all if you can’t sit like a monk.

Start with a minute, then try three, then go to five. It’s like reps with weights: you don’t start with something heavy and try to do a hundred – that is a path to giving up and feeling like you failed. Start light, make it doable so you can keep doing it, so you can keep finding a space where you can show up and ‘be’ for just a minute.

The thing about meditation, however you do it, is that the benefit sort of creeps up on you. You don’t see your muscles growing, or the weight shedding away, sometimes even the doing of it feels pointless. And then one day something shifts, a little, and the person who did the thing that would formerly make you clench your jaw and shout, is just a person who has a whole package of life-stuff that they are dealing with too and maybe you can say, “this is frustrating” and then move on. And on another day as you sit something imperceptible and unexplainable opens in your heart and you know ‘it’ is okay, whatever ‘it’ is.

Heuertz suggests different types of meditation depending on your enneagram triad. If you’re familiar with the enneagram give it a look and give it a try. I’m finding the practice of stillness very hard, and uncomfortable in a way that I know is about growth not pain, which is good. If you are not familiar with the enneagram and really just don’t need one more thing to do, well then just sit for a minute a day for a week, then for another week. Count your breaths for a minute using your fingers, chant along a mala, say the Lord’s Prayer twice (it takes thirty seconds to say it once), or just sit there, see what happens.

If you would like help building your practice reach out – it’s what I do!