Regularity and punctuality are critical to success and progress in our meditation and spiritual discipline – not only in the beginning, but at every page and every stage of our journey.
It is impressed on us from day one, that the two most essential pillars of our meditation are to practise at a regular time and a regular place – the same time and the same place each day, without fail. Regularity helps our punctuality, and punctuality helps our regularity: the one supports and inspires the other.
Jointly, they create a momentum, a flow that turns our puddling efforts into a stream, and then a river of continuous and ever-transcending newness-beauty, energy, inspiration, purpose and fulfilment.
The question immediately arises: what if one cannot meditate at the same time or place on a given day or for an extended time? What if you work shift work with varying hours each day? What if you are traveling across time zones, and cannot be at the same place even for two days in a row?
Every challenge presents opportunities; necessity is the mother of invention.
If you do shift work, fix your meditation “time” relative to the start of your work day. Meditate first thing after you wake up and before preparing yourself to go to work, no matter what hour of the day that is.
If you are away from home, create a “travelling shrine kit” that you set up in your room wherever you are.
This kit may include a photo of your spiritual teacher or a scene from nature, an incense holder, flower vase, some spiritual writings, set up on a beautiful cloth. This shrine becomes your “fixed place” for as long as you are away from home, keeping the continuity and thread of your spiritual discipline alive.