Q&A: How long each day should we meditate?

Question: Is there advice on the amount of time the morning and evening [meditation] session should be? Everybody is so busy nowadays but 15 min per [meditation] session or 30 min per [meditation] session? To me personally, I find mornings almost impossible yet evenings can offer long sessions (1+ hours), understanding that the more the merrier.

My Answer: When the desire to awaken is stronger then the desire for the other things we choose to spend our time doing, then we will meditate more often.

My statement may be triggering, because many people on the spiritual path believe that they value their awakening more than anything else, however when we observe the choices we make and the actions we create, we truly see what beliefs and desires are the strongest. Our strongest desires will overpower our weaker desires to determine how we spend our time.

Every choice we make is a weighing of the potential happiness we will experience by making that choice. We then act upon the ideas that we believe will give us the greatest happiness.

Some people may have a strong desire to awaken – such as thinking about awakening continually throughout the day. But they may also have strong resistance – such as low self-worth or a fear that someone painful will happen if they meditate. Our resistance to our desires will negate the power of our desires. Then we don’t act on our desires even though we constantly want to.

It’s best that, no matter what, we meditate twice per day for at least 20 minutes of time in the morning and for 20 minutes in the evening. We should strive to never miss our meditation. If possible, we should meditate longer than 20 minutes. But a 20 minute meditation twice per day should be never missed. Making a decision to accomplish this will create a new habit that soon becomes easy to follow.

Every person can give at least 20 minutes of their morning and 20 minutes of their evening to meditation. I cannot think of a single situation were someone cannot meditate when they wake up and again before they sleep. We just have to make the choice. Maybe it’s a little uncomfortable or inconvenient at first, but if we commit to daily meditation, the discomfort will soon change to happiness and looking forward to meditating each day. Making a choice and sticking to it is incredibly powerful.