Meditation changed my life
I love meditation. It is so freeing. It keeps me balanced, calm, patient, and really aids me in maintaining my mental health. For those of you reading in the future, I’m writing this during the COVID-19 epidemic, so keep that in mind that when I say my meditation aids me in maintaining my mental health, that is even through the difficulties I (and we all) am experiencing today.
Here is the Wikipedia definition -
Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.
I really like this definition because it keeps things kind of vague and open. There are many different ways to meditate, with many different goals, results, and paths. I only really know how I meditate, which is rooted in the Taoist form of meditation, similar to Buddhist meditation. My practice is to try to keep myself neutral, one with the universe, maintaining all perspective, allowing myself to let go of things like judgement, negativity, frustration, and clutter.
I meditate with my eyes closed. I don’t use a blurred view or focus on something like a candle. Rather, I focus my mind on something, whether it’s my breath, the energy in my dantian (focus of energy, in the lower navel), a gentle repeating mantra, or music. Music was a great focus in my early days of meditating that made it much easier to get started and stay focused. For me, going through this process of looking inward is about finding a form of calm that I can’t get anywhere else. I like to think about it as giving my brain a break, for even a few minutes a day. My brain is constantly going through a million thoughts, processing, solving, storing, remembering, and a busy mind gets really tiresome. Giving my mind just those few minutes of not having to do anything really feels like the best form of recharging batteries to me. I find so much clarity and work through so many of life’s challenges as a result.
I was a bit of an angry kid. I wasn’t evil, or a bad kid, was always a good guy, I just spent a lot of time frustrated. I spent a few years of my adult life trying to find how to deal with that frustration. Not being a kid and having parents I could yell at to let it out (sorry, mom and dad!), I had to find a way to deal. I didn’t start off with the healthiest of ways. I put that energy in partying, drinking, drugs, overworking during the day, overpartying at night. Just really going after the chase. By the time I was in my mid twenties, I had started reading about Taoism and realized that the kind of lifestyle I was living doesn’t have a long lifespan. Change wasn’t an overnight thing, but through the guidance of Taoist thought, the focus of meditation, and the understanding that I can feel good (not like shit every morning), I slowly adopted more and more of the lifestyle. After years of slowly transforming, I’m feeling better than I ever have, and live a life fulfilled with a great career, many many hobbies (as this blog shows), a wonderful relationship with my fiancee, Margarita, and manage to juggle all of it, even alongside COVID-19, with grace, calm, and joy.
From talking to others, finding a way to “turn the world off” and focus on yourself tends to be the most difficult barrier to entry when it comes to meditation. To the point where the thought of doing it is practically intimidating. I had a bit of a natural way in, growing up with music always in my ears. So I just used that when I started. I put on some headphones, turned up the music, closed my eyes, and just focused on what I was hearing. I would listen to a single instrument, or melody, or something individual, and focused on it until the rest just disappeared, and then eventually even the part I was focused on would disappear, and all I would be left with was music as a form of static noise, and an empty mind. Eventually, I found how to get there myself. It was really just a matter of practice and getting an understanding of how it feels.
I would recommend meditation to everyone. Not that meditation works for everyone, but I think everyone to try it and see if it does. As meditation has picked up popularity here in the west, there is so much out there. You can find guided meditations of all types, on Spotify, Youtube, even on the Peloton app. It’s everywhere. Pick a five minute guided meditation, put on a calming scent, pop on some headphones, close your eyes, and just drift away. You won’t regret it.