Noticing xx - sitting

I've written before about not sitting (here), since it's something I do very well. Although I'd like to be less successful at it—that is, more successful at actually slowing down and taking the time to meditate. I know it would do me a world of good. It's not hard, or shouldn't be. What does it take? Pulling out the cushion, setting a timer, maybe lighting some incense? Seriously, how difficult is that?

Well, I once heard someone say that what makes it hard is our ego: that pesky taskmaster wants nothing to do with being put on the shelf even for as little as fifteen, twenty minutes. It refuses to shut up.

There's that. And there's also making a routine out of it—which I'm also not good at. Routines of any sort. I'm trying to get into a routine of going to the gym Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 2:30, when it's relatively empty. Today marked day one. So far so good!

Next on the agenda: find a time to sit. Daily. I've got the tools:

Not shown is my zafu. I no longer have a zabuton, since the cat, perhaps in solidarity with my ego, peed on it. (Thank goodness he outgrew that behavior.) So I just put the zafu on the carpet. It works fine. Sometimes I even sit in my chair. The point isn't the material trappings; it's doing it. 

Today I thought I'd collect some links to guided meditations, which certainly make the whole project easier. I'm stealing these all (including descriptions) from mindful.org. They're a good place to start—or simply to go when a little assist seems useful.

• An 11-Minute Awareness of Breath Practice: Susan Kaiser-Greenland guides us through one of the oldest meditation practices called "Sit and Know You're Sitting.
• An Inquiring Practice to Notice the Body: This 20-minute guided meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn explores embracing sensations as they arise in the body in order to ground ourselves in the here and now.
• Breathing Compassion In and Out: Kristin Neff guides us through a 20-minute compassion meditation, first directing kind phrases to ourselves and then to others.
• The Breathscape Practice for Cultivating Mindfulness: A 20-minute meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn to allow you to tap into your capacity to be in touch with your experience, and be awake and aware with no agenda other than to be awake and aware.
• A Compassion Practice for Opening the Heart: A 15-minute meditation that begins by imagining yourself surrounded by a circle of the most loving beings, making generous offerings of love and goodwill to you.

And here and here are two blog postings from earlier that touch on sitting as well. And here's another one, about, hmmm, resolving to sit. This appears to be a theme of mine. (In a comment to that last one, my friend Kim mentioned Insight Meditation Timer: "Guided meditations. Music only. Variable length. I recommend.")