This is the first of two articles I wrote on meditation for a magazine a few years ago.
I thought some of you may be interested after Irishlady’s thread last week.
I couldn’t find it the other day, but here it is now. It was aimed at a younger audience, but there may be some useful information here, so I haven’t modified or edited it.
More information and meditation techniques are being posted in “What We Believe” threads.
STRESS MEDITATION AND THE MIND
This first article briefly discusses what we are (and are not) endeavouring to achieve through meditation, how we try to escape from our emotional turmoil and runaway mind, and fail, and what we can do about it.
What is meditation, and why bother doing it?
At its most basic, meditation is a way of relaxing your body and mind.
It is not an endurance test or a quest for dramatic experiences or getting into some higher state of mind.
It does not have to involve having to sit in strange positions, nor does it have to involve chanting, incense or wearing mala beads and unusual clothing. And it will definitely not include levitation or out of body experiences!
For many centuries meditation has been practiced as a way to experience a mind at peace.
The mind is by nature joyous, calm and clear.
Meditation is the pathway that allows us to relax within ourselves.
It allows us to have a mind where you can control your thoughts and emotions.
Just imagine being able to say “stop” to thoughts or negative emotions.
To have the capacity to be master of your own mind. To be able to be still whenever you want, to have a calm and peaceful mind.
More than ever, to-day’s society and our lifestyles expose us to high levels of stress, anxiety and emotional turmoil.
Loneliness, feelings of inadequacy, fear of the future and so on contribute to our already agitated mind.
Yet it is we ourselves who have generated these thoughts and feelings - the greatest harm we do to ourselves (and others) comes from our minds. Many of us use various methods to escape, and we usually reach out for something familiar that we associate with relief.
You can spend hours watching TV, surfing the net, or you can turn to drugs, sex or alcohol, but none of these escapes offer lasting satisfaction.
We shouldn’t waste our lives drowning in drugs and alcohol.
Too often we prefer the familiarity of our habituation to the certainty of an unfamiliar peace.
When we begin to meditate we realize how wild and frenzied things are: how wild our mind is, how wild life is.
What you do now comes from the mind and the thoughts you have at this moment.
Everything begins from the mind. Everything you do, everything you say.
You need to be aware of the type of thoughts that you are having. What are you thinking? How do you react to things?
The change starts from there, the future changes from there.
Meditation requires concentration, and concentration can be very elusive as the mind always wants to wander.
In meditation we are quietening our mind by using the technique of mindfulness.
To discover the basic goodness of our mind we have to slow down and experience our mind as it is.
The intention is not to remove stimulation but rather to direct your concentration to one element - one sound, one word, one image, or one's breath. When the mind is "filled" with the feeling of calm and peace, it doesn’t take off on its own and worry, stress out, or get depressed.
With meditative awareness we can begin to fully understand our negative patterns and have the motivation to work on them to change those patterns.
We can ask if we want to continue perpetuating the same suffering, or experiment with a different way of behaving.
We quieten our minds with a simple form of meditation called “peaceful abiding”.
For me, meditation becomes a way of "grounding" myself, of reaching a place of peace and stability,
What a wonderful state of mind to have – calm, peaceful, stable - letting our mind be as it should.
With practice, our mind is no longer bounding untamed from thought to thought.
We learn how to let ourselves just be here peacefully.
And when we are experiencing the present moment, we are experiencing life.
“When you enter into meditation, it is good to enter with a smiling heart.”
I thought some of you may be interested after Irishlady’s thread last week.
I couldn’t find it the other day, but here it is now. It was aimed at a younger audience, but there may be some useful information here, so I haven’t modified or edited it.
More information and meditation techniques are being posted in “What We Believe” threads.
STRESS MEDITATION AND THE MIND
This first article briefly discusses what we are (and are not) endeavouring to achieve through meditation, how we try to escape from our emotional turmoil and runaway mind, and fail, and what we can do about it.
What is meditation, and why bother doing it?
At its most basic, meditation is a way of relaxing your body and mind.
It is not an endurance test or a quest for dramatic experiences or getting into some higher state of mind.
It does not have to involve having to sit in strange positions, nor does it have to involve chanting, incense or wearing mala beads and unusual clothing. And it will definitely not include levitation or out of body experiences!
For many centuries meditation has been practiced as a way to experience a mind at peace.
The mind is by nature joyous, calm and clear.
Meditation is the pathway that allows us to relax within ourselves.
It allows us to have a mind where you can control your thoughts and emotions.
Just imagine being able to say “stop” to thoughts or negative emotions.
To have the capacity to be master of your own mind. To be able to be still whenever you want, to have a calm and peaceful mind.
More than ever, to-day’s society and our lifestyles expose us to high levels of stress, anxiety and emotional turmoil.
Loneliness, feelings of inadequacy, fear of the future and so on contribute to our already agitated mind.
Yet it is we ourselves who have generated these thoughts and feelings - the greatest harm we do to ourselves (and others) comes from our minds. Many of us use various methods to escape, and we usually reach out for something familiar that we associate with relief.
You can spend hours watching TV, surfing the net, or you can turn to drugs, sex or alcohol, but none of these escapes offer lasting satisfaction.
We shouldn’t waste our lives drowning in drugs and alcohol.
Too often we prefer the familiarity of our habituation to the certainty of an unfamiliar peace.
When we begin to meditate we realize how wild and frenzied things are: how wild our mind is, how wild life is.
What you do now comes from the mind and the thoughts you have at this moment.
Everything begins from the mind. Everything you do, everything you say.
You need to be aware of the type of thoughts that you are having. What are you thinking? How do you react to things?
The change starts from there, the future changes from there.
Meditation requires concentration, and concentration can be very elusive as the mind always wants to wander.
In meditation we are quietening our mind by using the technique of mindfulness.
To discover the basic goodness of our mind we have to slow down and experience our mind as it is.
The intention is not to remove stimulation but rather to direct your concentration to one element - one sound, one word, one image, or one's breath. When the mind is "filled" with the feeling of calm and peace, it doesn’t take off on its own and worry, stress out, or get depressed.
With meditative awareness we can begin to fully understand our negative patterns and have the motivation to work on them to change those patterns.
We can ask if we want to continue perpetuating the same suffering, or experiment with a different way of behaving.
We quieten our minds with a simple form of meditation called “peaceful abiding”.
For me, meditation becomes a way of "grounding" myself, of reaching a place of peace and stability,
What a wonderful state of mind to have – calm, peaceful, stable - letting our mind be as it should.
With practice, our mind is no longer bounding untamed from thought to thought.
We learn how to let ourselves just be here peacefully.
And when we are experiencing the present moment, we are experiencing life.
“When you enter into meditation, it is good to enter with a smiling heart.”
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