The first time I ever meditated, it was so much harder than I thought.
The concept of meditation is simple. You simply focus on one thing (like your breathing or a repeated word or phrase) or you focus on nothing.
And "stilling the motions of the mind" as Patanjali phrases it, feels really impossible when you first start.
It can be scary to sit still and focus the mind. In fact, for me it revealed just how much I thought I was keeping the world going with my thoughts. Seriously, there is an intense fear of turning off our mental chatter. It felt like planes would fall from the sky. (As if I were keeping them up there, ha!)
But with practice, we start to become aware of how much of our mental chatter is really just chatter. When we "turn it off" even if just for a few moments each day, we begin to observe the difference between our thoughts--the words that run through our heads--and our souls. What is real.
Once that distinction happens, we become more adept at noticing streams of worry, fear, anger or other mental grooves and because we have practice at turning them off, we do it.
There is a reason, people who meditate seem calmer. They are. They have the ability to see the clanging symbols for what they are. Just thoughts. And thoughts can be changed.
No comments
Post a Comment