One breath at a time

I hear this often: "I can't meditate." The first thought that comes to my mind when I hear this is "Who knows that?" In the late 1970s as I was sitting in a meditation cave in India, thoughts like, "I wonder what my girlfriend, Bonnie is doing?" or "Are the Red Sox in first place?" or
"What the heck am I doing in this cave?" I believed I wasn't "getting it". I believed I couldn't meditate. Because I was being constantly reminded by Swami Muktananda (www.shantimandir.com) that the energy within everyone and everything is also my essence, who I really am, I came to the realization:
Hey! My energy is watching the thinker. I am meditating even though thoughts keep banging around my skull like a pinball.

You are Being. You are an energy that has been with you before you took your first breath. That energy is unchanging. That energy is. All you have to do to get in touch with that energy is to "watch" one breath at a time. Don't try to stop the mind. The mind does what it does best: think thoughts. The thoughts will come, it is up to you to concentrate on one breath at a time and allow the thoughts to go. If you practice experiencing the space between the breaths you will find there are no thoughts in that gap. The thoughtless state will come naturally. Until of course the thought arises: I am not having any thoughts and the thoughtless state is over.

So just sit still and watch one breath at a time with all your love, honor and attention. One breath is all you need in that moment because that is all you have anyway. Then you can say,
"I can definitely meditate, I experienced one breath with love."