Why start with it anyway?

Everyone has a story to tell, often only in hindsight, about how they started their journey and why.
My journey began around 2008, during the final trimester of my pregnancy with our second daughter.
At that time, our first daughter was approximately five years old. We lived in a rural village in northern Israel, where farmers raised cows and sheep for meat production.
Even though my partner and I weren't involved in farming or community activities, we also had no interest in spirituality. Instead, we dreamed of love, justice without government, equality, and fair distribution of resources based on needs. We were rebels, or at least that's what we believed.

As my pregnancy neared its end, I suddenly felt a strong urge to learn meditation. At the time, the only two words I was familiar with around the subject were Buddha and Dalai Lama, which is due to their popularity alone. However, the year was 2008, and what could be found online regarding meditation practices was nothing like what is available today. I didn't know any other practitioners, So I sat in the yard on the grass with my eyes closed, waiting for something to happen. Well, guess what? Nothing did. Eventually, I gave up and returned to my pregnancy routine and preparations for birth.

The birth was great, the baby even more so. After a challenging time following the birth of our first child, our relationship finally found some stability, and life was returning to normal. Then, one night, I stumbled upon a Facebook post inviting people to a weekend of meditation practices with the theme "Get to Know the Nature of Your Mind."

Before that weekend, I had never participated in empowerment, observation, or spiritual development workshops. Even more than that, I had never spent any significant time away from my children. Not from my five-year-old and certainly not from my six-month-old baby. I hadn't spent much time away from my partner either, to be honest.

But something attracted me beyond reason. This idea, `Get to Know The Nature of Your Mind,` resonated with me in a way that left little room for doubt. Luckily, the baby had just been weaned, and her father, still my closest friend, encouraged me to go on an adventure. And so, armed with a strange determination, I went, for the first time in my life, to a seminar about which nothing was known or familiar to me in any way.

Have you ever heard the story of `The Bird of Freedom`? Well, the Bird of Freedom, they say, passes over every person's head once in his life. If you miss her, she will continue flying, and you won't see her again. However, if you somehow notice her and grab her feathers, she will take you to freedom, and nothing will be able to stand in your way.

I wrote about that weekend workshop in detail. In short, It was there that I first encountered the person who later became my root teacher. I also found new friends who would accompany me on the spiritual path.

In the following years, I did my best to establish a framework for meditation practice. Sometimes it was in the morning and other times, in the afternoon. I often had to eat, drink, do the dishes, do the laundry, and get some sleep before I sat for 5 minutes.
There's a saying: `It's a long way to the Zafu` (Zafu is a Japanese word for a meditation cushion), which was also entirely true for me.
Eventually, 5 minutes turned into 15 minutes, then 1 hour...3 hours...you get the point. What is important is that even in small doses, the thing you stick to eventually becomes a habit. The Dalai Lama said, `Nothing is difficult once you get used to it.` In other words, familiarization, getting used to something is what it's all about.

However, there were additional challenges. As my appreciation of the power of spiritual practice deepened, the external reality seemed to grow more chaotic. The more I cultivated inner stillness, the more turbulent the outside world appeared. In 2016, I went through a divorce and had to leave my home. After years of being a housewife and mother, I had to find a way to support myself and my daughters, as well as find a new way to be with them as the sole adult in the house.

Israel is a society where religion and nationality are intertwined, nourishing the sense of belonging for many of its inhabitants, accustomed to life in survival mode.
My practice of meditation, originating from the foreign East, was not necessarily accepted with ease and understanding. I'm not proud of how I handled conflicts I've been through to establish a 'room of one's own,' but I didn't know any different. I did not yet understand the power of compassion and the futility of anger. I'm still learning, and I have a long way to go. Perhaps the most significant thing I've learned since then is how little I can comprehend.