Unlock Inner Clarity – Learn to Meditate, Live Mindfully.
Meditation is not sleeping; it is not just resting. Although its effects produce deep rest and stress relief, it is a very active process. It is an active process and a practice. Active because you are awake, realizing the self, and a practice because, just like practicing playing the piano increases your ability to play music, meditation practice deepens your ability to know, understand, and befriend yourself.
As you start to observe yourself daily, you begin to realize that there are various characteristics of your being. In meditation, the entire range of who you are will show up at one time or another. Your fearful self, your angry self, your bored self, your sleepy self, your elated self, your restless self, your peaceful self, your endorphin-filled self, and your depressed self.
The power inside you:
Since this is a practice you do by yourself and for yourself, you do not have to justify any of your characteristics to anyone. Don’t feel guilty for being exactly who you are. You can have the full range of human experience right there with yourself. Emotions, including love and hate, prejudices, injustices, and celebrations, arise and dissipate in your mind. As you practice, you begin to know, yes, I am that.
Meditation is a self-regulating practice because you begin to realize, deep within yourself, that these characteristics of the human experience are your own. There is no one else in there, inside your mind. You are having these thoughts and feelings. This presents a valuable opportunity for in-depth self-exploration.
Getting to know yourself:
Knowing how to practice meditation is key, so you don’t get bored, discouraged, and give up. Getting to know yourself can feel uneasy or even challenging at first. Beginners often express the feeling that ‘nothing seems to be happening.’ This may mean that you need to hold the stillness of “nothing happening” and learn from that because, yes, you are that too. Just as you can learn music on your own, you can also learn meditation on your own. However, it helps to have a teacher – someone who has meditated for a longer time than you, perhaps, and has more direct experiences of meditation. Meditation is your direct experience.
The power within you
Meditation is the power within you because as you experience the self, you start to build awareness, and through that, compassion for “the other” grows. Meditation reflects the human experience if you are watchful. I am fortunate to have observed my mother’s journey through aging, as she lived a long life of 99 years. She enjoyed her fierce independence and living on her own, which my sister and I helped her achieve. I saw her experience a broad spectrum of emotions, and it made me realize how deeply emotions are woven into what makes us human. It must be because emotions are connected to our feelings, which we experience through our bodies. If Mom got upset, others would remark, “Oh, why is she so angry today?” That gave Mom and me opportunities to discuss this. I would tell her that I was angry, too, and how I had seen the wave of it in meditation. She then thoroughly enjoyed telling me, “I could see myself getting angry, I did not mean that, you know who I am, right?” She asked if I understood. She was not her anger. We could both acknowledge that a wave of anger had come over us. We took a moment to console one another and fully absorb what had just happened. From there, the dialogue was rich and non-confrontational. I learned compassion from these interactions, as I could see what was arising in her and witnessed it in myself. The angry other was no longer frightening. It took my mother some time to accept my need for practice time, but as her compassion for me grew, she began to welcome it. In her last year of life, she started asking me, “Is it not time for you to meditate? She would then go to her bed to rest. Coincidentally, we both ended our quiet reflection at the exact moment.
How to do meditation:
Meditation practice requires you to follow specific rules, such as those related to playing music. Set your time, as it is essential to set your intention to meditate. Choose to open and close your meditation. Know you will hear everything. Spine straight. If you do not have the strength to sit, lie flat on your back. If you are overtired, you will fall asleep, so set an alarm for the time you want to close your practice. If you have fallen asleep, meditate for a few minutes with your eyes closed before resuming your routine. You can practice with your breath, use a mantra (a repetitive word), or be mindful for the allotted time. When you practice with breath or a mantra, you prefer the breath or mantra to all the other thoughts, plans, and schemes that naturally arise in your mind during meditation. Preferring your mantra (or watching your breath) means you invite it in (go back to it) when you notice you are thinking. You will not be able to control this. It is an act of noticing. Even if you create a meal plan or develop a business strategy during meditation and are bombarded by thoughts, that is still your meditation. Stress is being released in your body and mind. The scientific community has research that proves that meditating twice a day for 20 minutes is sufficient for achieving health benefits. Lowered blood pressure and reduced stress are among the notable results.
You do not have to make it complicated by thinking you must meditate at sunrise and sunset. You may need to get to work or drop the kids off at school. Make your meditation practice work for you; you do not have to work for it. Over time, you will notice that the practice makes you smarter. After each meditation, you will have an inner knowing that you have renewed energy and can tackle a difficult task, or you will know that your ‘to-do list’ can be cut in half.
A healthier you is a more powerful you. A compassionate you is a more powerful you. All this is readily available if you decide to make meditation your daily practice.
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