Meditation is never about stopping your thoughts or somehow willing yourself to have no thoughts. Can you imagine trying and trying hard to stop breathing or feeling or wanting? Trying to stop a natural process is going to hurt. So, please, give up that idea. Instead embrace the idea that the mind has a life of its own. The mind likes to stay busy. The mind likes to wander, too. Your mind can take you to some interesting places. It can help you to see things more clearly and be better prepared to take action. Or, it can worry you with its barrage of thoughts that become more and more illogical as worry takes over. Thoughts can become inner chaos keeping you awake at night and disturbing your day.
Even if negativity isn’t clearly taking over your inner world there is another sand trap. It is the too-busy mind. Thoughts that fill your awareness all the time. There is no true break. The too-busy mind has negative consequences like trouble sleeping and lack of focus during the day. You might have an overall sense of ill-at-ease and discomfort. Of course, you cannot help but have feelings about your many, many thoughts and the mental stew gets thicker. The mind can become a lot to deal with.
What if the mind could rest? Take a vacation. Some people desperately resort to drug-induced states to give themselves time out of the too-many-thoughts trap. Some people harm themselves or walk themselves into harmful situations as a catastrophic distraction from out of control thoughts. Rest, yes. Harm, no. Distractions, external or internal, no. Rest.
Meditation offers real rest for the body/mind without drugs and no harm at all. In other words, when we meditate, we feel better on all levels, including the physical body. We can offer the mind a slower pace and even stillness. Peace is possible and peace feels amazingly sane and loving. The human world does not seem to offer much opportunity to be still. Where is the cultural reward for taking things easy and for being reflective?
When we meditate we feel better on all levels, including the physical body.
Meditation can give you
- a resetting of your nervous system,
- your outlook on life,
- revive your sense of purpose,
- instill a stronger self-love,
- support your spiritual life, and
- help you to feel more connected to others and to the natural world.
All of these and more just from seeking stillness.
Stillness. It sounds like the opposite of doing and doing and doing. That might be the case if stillness were defined as “doing nothing for awhile.” It’s not. It’s not empty. Stillness becomes highly valuable to you because of what you might find there. It is an internal journey.
Think of meditation as the practice of seeking stillness or rather it is the practice of allowing stillness to exist in your life. Allowing is key here because in every form of meditation we are letting go of the idea that we have to make something happen. Cultural norms might dictate that action is the only thing that matters. It is how anything gets done. It is how cities and monuments and the next big invention happen. Meditation is all about Being and valuing that beingness—your beingness—over taking action. In that light, meditation offers you balance and peace where doing, doing, doing offers you none.
Meditative states happen by conscious choice but can happen as a kind of drifting away from a too busy life and mind. Notice daydreaming or any time that you have later realized that you mindtripped or dropped out of the too-busy stream. Where did you go for those few minutes? That experience is a demonstration of how strong a need your mind has for taking a rest. It is telling you that it needs to drop out and feel better. Why not let it? Those few minutes were a true release. The experience was spiritual in that temporarily your mind was no longer strictly anchored to the physical plane. There was no effort. You found allowing without the conscious mind forcing or demanding anything. It was a restful state of being and one that you can choose to give yourself often.
Here is another meditative path that is easy to discover for yourself. Take a walk in the woods or swim in the ocean or cuddle a puppy. Let yourself be truly present with no thoughts of what experiences are behind you or what responsibilities may be ahead of you. You’ve discovered The Now. That presence of mind that you allowed to happen is a meditative state. Lose yourself in your gardening tasks. Hug a tree and express gratitude. Ask a tree if it is okay to approach and visit. You’ll feel its answer. If yes then sit with your back against it. Be still. Allow your mind to clear. Enjoy the experience. In each of these, your spirit was free. You felt as though you were somewhere else because you were. You knew by your experience that you are part of universal consciousness and other planes of existence. All good.
Sitting meditation. Was that the first thing that came to mind when you began reading this post? “Runner’s high” is a meditative state so once again I am saying that there are many ways to meditate. Here, I just want to leave you with a few beneficial points about finding stillness through a sitting practice. So-o-o many ways to sit! No exaggeration. If you thought that we, meditators, are all sitting in lotus posture you would not be correct. Aim for body comfort so sitting in a chair is perfectly fine. The body should be held comfortably spine erect with the shoulders gently back, not rounded. I had back surgery and had to sit on a chair for a year. No problem. There are also floor chairs, a cushioned seat to support your back. Bodies have changing needs over time so it is more than okay to judge your needs each time that you meditate. This is what my Buddhist priest taught us twenty years ago: if the body maintains a stable position, then it offers a home for the wandering mind to return to. The mind is going to wander but with practice it stays home more and wanders less.
all the thinking.
Another good idea might be to begin your meditation journey with guided meditations. Find a teacher locally and/or use one of the many meditation apps. There are so many free guided experiences on youtube.com.
I encourage you to take a few notes about your meditation experiences. You want to help yourself to accept
- that you have a rich and wonderful inner life that’s valuable to you and
- that whatever you felt, saw in your mind, or came to know was real.
Meditative states of consciousness are naturally part of you. Allow yourself to have them often. Enjoy. You’ll feel better.###