I'm still reading "Wherever You Go, There You Are", a small portion daily prior to my meditation.  It's amazing that wherever I open the book, it's right where I need to be, the chapter pertaining to something very relevant, important to me. That's how I started the book: I opened it and read, and now I am following the format until it feels like it's time to do something different.

A recent section I read was about escaping from "the world" by doing your meditation.  When it's time to be doing something you need to do, and you choose to escape it by meditating, it's not helpful and is actually like taking a step backwards.  One of the reasons for meditating is to lose your attachments.  And escaping can be an attachment.

And that's exactly what I've been doing the past couple weeks.  Since we are moving out of our home and having a new one built because of storm damage, I have until May 30 to get everything packed.  My husband and I are both packing, but I have more "stuff" plus a business with inventory, so I have at least three times the "stuff" husband has, and I'm working a lot longer doing the packing.  He leaves the house to play tennis every day just before noon, when he leaves, that's when I do my meditation.  And instead of doing a meditation, then getting on with what I need to do, I've been making my meditation time longer.  My regular meditation is 20-30 minutes and I've been making it last an hour to avoid packing things.  And I've not felt good about it, but didn't understand why, because wasn't meditating an hour a "good thing"?  Yes, it is, according to Jon Kabat-Zinn, but not if you're using meditation as an escape, and letting meditation become an attachment.

Interesting how I opened the book to that chapter.