meditate daily

... with waking up in the middle of the night and then feeling sub-par during the day. But an hour of meditation each day does go a long way towards balancing out my energy level…

... through messages written in chalk on the sidewalk, or at least a previous entry would appear to suggest this… Either that, or there’s a joker around here who says, “Hey, here comes that Meditation7 guy! Quick! Write something deep on the sidewalk and see if he quotes it on 43Things!” :-)

I was getting ready to take the bus home the other day, at the end of my workday, and I had with me the insightful book I’ve been reading as of late. It’s reading that requires active attention and thinking, and I realized that I wanted in fact to vegetate on the way home, and considered popping into the library to pick up something light to read instead during my trip.

Then it dawned on me that of course we all experience the need, the want, to vegetate, or regress for a little while in our lives. Granted, hardly an earth-shattering discovery. But I also thought that meditation is a more soulful way to “vegetate” that leaves me more connected, refreshed, rested, and grounded. In addition to my regular meditation practice, I’m going to think of this whenever I’m in a more vegetative mindset.

So I’m adopting this motto from now on, and am thinking of creating a T-Shirt that says, “Don’t vegetate – meditate!” Maybe even with the internationally-known “no” sign (the circle with a diagonal bar across it) over a television. (Simply because it’s the easiest symbol of vegetating that we have in our culture.)

What do you think? :-)

I think for anyone struggling to get a consistent meditation practice going, it’s essential to know exactly why you’re meditating – the specific benefits and value you get out of the practice so it motivates you to keep that connection alive.

So, here for my benefit as well as anyone else’s (who might use it to get some momentum for their practice) are the reasons why I meditate.

1. It keeps me in touch with a sense of “rightness.”

No matter what happens in your world, or in the world at large, no matter whether relationships are broken or jobs are lost or anything else, when you sink into the profound sense of peace that comes in the midst of meditation, everything feels okay. You’ve touched the source of peace within, which is true and always there beneath the surface, as opposed to looking for it “out there” in the world, where it shifts constantly according to people and circumstances.

2. It relaxes my body and heals it

Being a little on the overachiever side, my tendency is to be in motion and oftentimes in exertion. Though I practice yoga and that also has a balancing effect on my body, few things feel quite as good as the sense that there’s no left-over tension in my body after a good meditation practice. I certainly feel mellow, but not limp: it’s an empowered state where I could instantly call upon all my energy if necessary yet enjoy using the least possible amount of it that’s consistent with efficiency.

3. It raises my wisdom

I know that there’s only so far I can develop my intelligence, my street-smarts, my spatial reasoning, or my conceptual understanding. At some point, it’s all limited by how much I can experience, take in, and process. Meditation goes beyond the mind, into a state that I believe is the source of wisdom, which encompasses far more than intelligence. Consistently dipping into the pool of meditation washes away the static in my mind so that wisdom starts to emerge more and more. I think of it as the ultimate way to upgrade my mental software… even if often I can’t see the changes immediately. These changes will often show signs in flashes of intuition or creativity and a growing willingness to trust the direction in which both the intuition and the creativity take me.

4. It sets up a different tone to my day-to-day living

When I meditate first thing in the morning, I feel like I’m not living my life on auto-pilot; I feel like I am far more of a conscious participant of the choices, events, and people who populate my life, and that hence I also respond more consciously to them.

5. It makes it easier for me to take better care of myself

The level of awareness addressed in the above point means that I’m also more conscious of taking better care of myself (getting to bed early, being aware of not getting sucked into the computer, drinking water throughout the day, eating good food, breathing well), which in turn makes it easier to maintain my meditation practice, in a self-reinforcing loop.

Perhaps as my practice of meditation continues, I’ll discover new reasons to keep meditating. If you have some more, please share them with everyone here.

I see a lot of people who post under this goal struggle with it. I think the best way to develop a meditation practice is first to associate a LOT of pleasure with it. Before you try sitting meditations (or walking or standing), may I submit the following practice for your consideration?

• Cue on your CD player sounds or music to listen to and make it loud enough to keep your attention from straying (I myself am partial to Tibetan bowls or Tibetan horns because they’re not “music” and hence have no structure).

• Lie down in the most comfortable position. Lie still during this practice, adjusting only if you must

• Breathe slowly and rhythmically without forcing. After a while the body will find its own rhythm of breath. If you notice it becomes shallow, go back to the depth of the breathing as soon as you notice it. To blend hearing and breathing, pretend you’re breathing in the sound that you’re listening to, and breathing it out as well

• Instead of trying to make the mind quiet, try to relax your body further. By focusing on relaxation and on sensations, you open up the possibility for inner stillness. Check form time to time: “How much more relaxed can I possibly become?”

• Don’t force issues of time or frequency. But it has been my experience that if you can do it daily and for at least 30 minutes, it is good. If 45 minutes or more, go for it: you may experience deep pleasure at how relaxed your body has become and how your mind may have shifted, on its own, to a meditative state just by focusing on relaxing the body deeper and deeper.

However, if you can only find 3 minutes, do it anyway. Give the practice attention, and it will grow on its own.

... “It’s hard to be Awakened if you’re having trouble being awake.”

Part of why getting enough quality sleep is paramount, is because it lets you do things like meditate in the morning, before anything else, which has a way of giving focus and organization to your day in a way that no day-planner ever can…

This is just a reminder for myself of the importance of getting to bed early, which leads to good sleep, to getting up early… to meditating… and to leading a life more on-purpose than otherwise.

Oye_Vey was saying to me here that she gets “restless doing meditation when I could be running around or riding my bike or climbing trees.”

Now, one can go into a meditative experience while dancing, biking, or walking, swimming, or running, to name a few.

But also the traditional approach to just sitting and emptying one’s mind can be tweaked for those who need a little help. Certainly, there’s nothing that says it has to be sitting. It could be lying – just don’t fall asleep. It could also be in the midst of sound (sometimes places with loud music make for a meditative experience if you let them – the music crowds out your thoughts and you shift into present-mindedness) or using specific visual or aural cues to keep the mind centered, the breath deep, and the attention in place. Ultimately, though, when you get to a place of true meditation, there’s a shift in your mind – and that shift takes care of everything else.

Now in terms of meditating while in your dreams, it’s indeed a cool concept, though I suspect it would lead to either falling “back to sleep” in the dream or waking up – which is why lucid dreaming is so uncommon. But so is lucid waking. :-)

... it pretty much guarantees I’ll meditate daily. As I said in a comment to someone else on 43T, if you aim to meditate twice a day, one of those times at the very least is bound to be fulfilled… This is how I actually managed to make my yoga practice a daily thing. Tell myself I’d do it twice. Now let’s see, where else in my life does this apply? :-)

at a bistro last night, and one of them remarked (upon hearing that I didn’t drink alcohol) that a beer helps him to be more present and go beyond the facade and the persona that he can affect being sometimes. I told him, “Well, I just came from a meditation class, and I feel the exact same way as you do with a beer.” And I didn’t need to go to the bathroom as often as he, after his beers. :-)

The statue of Shiva is often depicted as Shiva standing on a baby, or a man looking at a leaf. It symbolizes the part of us that is so caught up in the physical world (observing the leaf) that we forget that we have God dancing on our backs…

So, as I walked in meditation, I smiled at the synchronicity of seeing Shiva written on the sidewalk, as a reminder that, amid my little life, the entire universe is dancing on my back… :-)