Tm on the bus

I'd been feeling low over the festive period. Negative thoughts accumulate, I let the good things slip and all of a sudden I'm a puddle of muddle stink on the floor.
One of the things I let slip was my tm (transcendental meditation) that I'd been practicing. I'd missed the odd one, then the odd day and then every day. I felt bad, had a dim view of myself and my failings: can't I stick with anything ??
Well. I have quite a commute by bus each morning and I decided to try and get my tm going again, doing it when I was travelling to work. It's fine : I just look like I've dozed off.
So, I've started it again and feel better about taking a bit of control over my life again. I need to make sure that there's a window seat so I won't have to move to let anyone else off, and I need to make sure that the bus ride lasts more than 20 minutes. I've managed to do this so far.

It's peculiar when you are meditating on the bus. I've made the journey to the southside of Glasgow many many times and it doesn't seem too long. Yet when I meditate its like I feel the grain of the time taken to travel, stroke the texture of each moment. It suddenly feels like quite a long journey. A road travelled.
I guess what I've taken from this is how much I must totally zone out when I'm eyes-open on the bus. My mind skitters off somewhere and my thoughts and attention follow. So when it's my stop it feels that I haven't actually been on the bus that long. And I haven't, in a sense. I've not been there, but off elsewhere in a thought fugue. Physically, my arse is parked, but that's about the extent of my presence.

A small step then, my tm on the bus. There and back again. A reclamation of something that helps. Too often have I zoned out in life, resisted the things that will actually bring positive things my way. But I'm working on it, there - eyes shut, riding the moment - on the morning bus.