Early on in my meditation ‘career,’ I wanted to believe what the teachers I loved and respected were saying about meditation and how it somehow rearranged the psyche in an indescribable, beneficial way that made peace less elusive. Like just about anyone else who dips their toes in meditation, for the longest time I was secretly convinced that I was the only one who lacked the discipline or “control” to still my over-busy mind. A lousy, failed meditator.

I even dwelled on the idea maybe getting all that quiet, all that still, and all that cobweb-free wasn’t an entirely good idea. Hey, maybe those cobwebs were there for a good reason, like the cotton throw I put on the arm of the sofa to cover up where the cat shredded the fabric to bits. Leave it there! And what if it actually “worked” and I achieved spontaneous enlightenment? Who would do the laundry? Would I still be able to enjoy a Three Stooges movie? What could happen?

But the idea was intriguing enough that I threw a little caution to the wind, judging that even if it meant giving up on Moe and Curly for awhile, it might just be worthwhile. So I’d start a meditation practice in earnest, then falter. Then start again, then falter again. Over and over. I’d get inspired at a meditation retreat and then retreat back into old patterns, more or less.

But as anyone who has eventually caught the meditation wave and continued to surf it will tell you, it doesn’t take much time in the thought-free zone to catch on to the fact that there’s really something to this. And yes, unfortunately, words fail in describing how “found” we get in non-thinking. And how sitting in stillness makes the thoughts that do manage to bubble up arrive more and more benignly.

“Lost in thought.” Maybe that’s what’s happened to us. We’ve really gotten confused, and lost, in all that thought. But the good news is, stilling the mind -- even a little bit -- gets us good and found again.

There’s no need to worry that once the cobwebs are gone, you’ll find something you don’t want to see. Though it may feel a little scary at first -- as one of my teachers says, “If you take up a transformative practice, it’s going to transform you” -- but even if you ditch it for awhile, you can come back. Your peace lies waiting for you like a patient cat.

With all the things that need tending to in our lives and on the planet, is it selfish to carve out time for this? We’re rewarded for thinking well, for achieving, for doing. What’s the reward for being quiet and listening for guidance?

The reward is clarity. The reward is joy. The reward is an increasingly clear hit on the truth that the Source that feeds us is all-loving and all-accepting. You do it for yourself, but in doing it, the whole team wins.

And you still get to enjoy the Three Stooges.