Everyone’s talks about meditation as if we all should have an extra hour or two to spare each day.  Duh, in a world full of distraction and important challenges, who has time to sit still?  So, meditation remains on the list of should do, should want to do.

Yet, there is something very fascinating about the idea of meditation, right?  Oh, like increased focused concentration, better physical health, deeper way of life…how about cultivation of the mind/heart space leading to greater calm, clarity, and authentic creative expression in life.  Time to get off the thought proliferation treadmill and take control of your destiny!  Now I find that compelling.

I have been a purist when it comes to some things in life; meditation is one.  I think of it as a precious metaphysical experience that I don’t want tainted with too much intellectual training, which I associate with tension to some degree.  And tension is counterproductive in meditation.  I find myself resistant as I was when Gustavo Naveira, one of the world’s greatest Argentinian tangueros, said I had to learn to lead if I wanted to advance my dance.  I cried that night because I really didn’t want to think that much or work that hard.  I loved the easy, intuitive flow of following, which is, by the way, the result of extensive training.  Yet I did follow his instruction and dedicated 2-3 years learning the lead part of the intriguing dance of tango…and I did so with joy, a little bit of struggle, yet I persisted and did learn an enormous amount about the multidimensional dance and equally about myself.

Same with meditation, I learned at 8 years of age, and trained periodically over the decades.  It is an exquisite zone I have woven into my life through movement with great satisfaction, very little effort.  I equate thinking scientifically as hard work which, and admittedly I am a little lazy.  But still, I know that there is fine line between effort and cultivation with easy intention, which is precisely the field in which Richard Dixey PhD’s book Three Minutes a Day: A Fourteen Week Course to Learn Meditation and Transform Your Life lies.

Now you can take it off your to do list and just do it, for only three minutes a day.  Bite-sized exercises done daily over a week is certainly manageable with any schedule.  Learning to learn without tension is also a worthwhile endeavor, and over fourteen weeks effortlessly accomplished with a persistent ease.

It wasn’t until I read Richard Dixey’s new book Three Minutes a Day that I clearly understood what goes on with meditation exactly, which compellingly would convince anyone wondering why to make it part of life.  Scientifically intellectual in his text, Dixey gets inside the process of mind in ways rarely articulated, and with the wisdom of the ancients informing his perspective.

The most profound thing about meditating is liberation from the prison of our own cognition, and the ability to determine our future from a base of calm clarity, that is free from the past.  Hello, who doesn’t want to create a liberated future?  It’s the reflexive reactivity that causes us to make choices we later regret.  Learning to take a beat when we are flustered, entering the peaceful space between thoughts, essentially “to establish a break in the momentum of events,” that allows us to reset.  We learn to activate “our innate intelligence to free itself from the cage of ideas in which it has been imprisoned,” so we can forge our own clear path.

Since I am a meditator of sorts, and deeply introspective, I initially was slightly cautious about reading a book on meditation, which must be experienced to really understand and to integrate.  Yet the unfoldment of Three Minutes a Day is exacting in that one exercise gives way to the next.  It is an instruction manual concisely written which will set up the reader for simple practice each week in very little time.  As Dixey says, persistence, like filling a bathtub with a drippy faucet, works to integrate the practice.  “A not doing is neither difficult nor easy.”  Strong, clear intention without effort is the key.  There is no goal, no failure, no success, but the rewards are priceless!

I’d say that I finally own myself today because in my way I practice precisely what Richard Dixey teaches, and the cultivation continues with his new insights!  Peace, liberation, clarity, choice, unbounded freedom, wow!  Whatever time one spends learning and practicing meditation returns an optimistic present and future.  Eventually, the practice can be integrated into a conscious way of living taking no time at all away from the plethora of opportunities we each engage in daily.  Richard Dixey, thank you!  New World Library, thank you for publishing this excellent guide to living a fully liberated, blissful life!